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Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers
- brokentone 7y agoWhy would we combine Whole Foods and Trader Joe's? Whew, at least it's not bigger than Target and Walgreens combined though! It is however about 40% the size of Kroger... so there is that.
- gbear605 7y agoWhole Foods and Trader Joes aim at a similar demographic. It is an odd combination though that is clearly just there to provide for the article.
- TheLoneTechNerd 7y agoYeah I'm honestly not sure why people would be surprised at this comparison - Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are specialty stores. Nobody goes into them just to buy a head of lettuce. Trader Joe's has their own in-store brands for tons of products, which has spawned various guides on what should/shouldn't be bough there (https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/what-to-buy-at-trader-joes/ https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/what-to-buy-at-tr... for example). CVS, on the other hand, is a far more general store. They both sell food, but they're not in the same market segment - so the comparison is strange.
- gbear605 7y agoI know a lot of people who do all their shopping at Trader Joe’s.
- TheLoneTechNerd 7y agoI know a lot of people that don't. Now we can have an anecdote duel!
- gbear605 7y agoThe claim was “nobody does.” I responded with “someone does.” An anecdote is sufficient proof here.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dagw 7y agoI don't live in the US, but I've been to Whole Foods when visiting and certainly felt like a perfectly normal grocery store, not too different from most other grocery stores I've been to. What makes it a specialty store and why wouldn't you go there to buy a head of lettuce?
- TheLoneTechNerd 7y ago"Whole Foods" has earned its nickname of "Whole Paycheck" (https://www.fastcompany.com/90305918/whole-foods-is-becoming-whole-paycheck-once-again https://www.fastcompany.com/90305918/whole-foods-is-becoming...) although they've tried various ways of combating this, some mentioned in that article
- musicale 7y agoWhole Foods started out as an upscale/organic grocery store, but now they're mostly just Amazon's grocery store.
- jfengel 7y agoDoes CVS have lettuce?
- bluntfang 7y ago>Nobody goes into them just to buy a head of lettuce. wtf are you talking about? I do this (with other greens and vegetables). If anything, the people shopping at WF/TJ don't want a head of lettuce because it's a stupid product, but I think you're using that as an example...but using head of lettuce just makes me believe you don't understand the demographic.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt attracts attention. It's not very surprising. When you take a broad meta-category like "groceries" and have 10x the number of locations, it isn't shocking that they would move more product. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods target specific demographics. I live in a metro area of about 300k people and there are 1 each Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. There are probably 40-50 CVS outlets. Their sole income driver is margin on food. CVS focuses on market saturation -- their profit driver is drugs (a market in which they vertically integrate distribution) that are mostly 3rd party paid. They survive in food deserts because the money made on drugs offsets heavy shrink losses.
- Nasrudith 7y agoMy guess is they might fill a supermarket niche more in denser urban areas. I don't know first hand but it cluld make sense. I heard accounts of ironically Whole Foods which is referred to as "whole paycheck" in other areas being the cheap option in some areas. I would guess traffic vs stock would also influence prices in non-obvious ways. With perishables, more expensive real estate, high traffic, and customers more likely to buy everything by foot they may be less of a speciality niche in urban areas than suburbs.
- jhallenworld 7y agoYeah, and at higher prices. CVS is high on the list of Fortune 100 companies for good reason.
- throwayEngineer 7y agoGovernment lobbying in the medical field, not food sales.
- ezekg 7y agoI almost always go to CVS when I need to get a few small items in a hurry (I usually use Amazon Fresh for groceries), so I'm not surprised about this at all. Going to CSV is much easier than fighting the crowd at Walmart since there's only a handful of people there at any given time.
- colanderman 7y agoDitto. My wife and I are stereotypically the perfect WF/TJs customers: ecologically-minded hippie-ish DINKs in an upper-middle-class suburb. We live a 3 minute drive from both, and she works a short walk from a Roche Bros (which serves a similar demographic). Yet, despite the poorer selection and higher prices, the majority of groceries that enter our house come from CVS. Why? My wife visits one regularly to pick up prescriptions, and they have just enough of what we buy, at sufficiently justifiable prices, that she can get enough of what we need without an extra trip to a different store. The most convenient store is the one you're already at.
- dev_dull 7y agoI didn’t even realize I needed to justify periodically buying food there until I read this thread. As if their success somehow means there’s something nefarious going on or they’re taking advantage of people. There’s a CVS everywhere.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoThat's a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station / convenience mart: there's a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.
- manojlds 7y ago> And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with Why so?
- samayylmao 7y agoIf you can't afford transportation you're limited to what you can walk to. In the area I live you cannot bring more than one bag with you on public transportation and it takes almost an hour to get across town on the bus. It would be cheaper to buy marked up food from a gas station or drugstore than pay for a taxi ride or waste half a day riding the bus. Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor.
- joezydeco 7y agoI can confirm that. I live near a block of apartment homes that are populated by lower income residents. There's a CVS and a gas station/cstore within walking distance, but the grocery stores and department stores (Target, Walmart) are all more than 2+ miles away. The buses are infrequent and expensive.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAnecdata: I have money and property and plentiful transportation (three vehicles for the two of us). Live miles from town. I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens. Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.
- francisofascii 7y agoCVS is everywhere. Whole Foods and Trader Joes's are only in a few cities and usually there is only one. Guessing about 10 times the number of locations. https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state https://www.cvs.com/store-locator/cvs-pharmacy-locations https://www.cvs.com/store-locator/cvs-pharmacy-locations
- stronglikedan 7y agoGuessing about 10 times the number of locations. More like 20x. FTFA: last year CVS and Walgreens each had close to 10,000 stores in the US, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods each had fewer than 500 locations.
- basseq 7y agoThis is a matter of scale. The more interesting metric would be a per-store figure, where TJ and WF outsell CVS by a factor of 5–7x.[1] I'm surprised that it's not higher. > The eyebrow-raising figure probably comes down to an issue of scale – last year CVS and Walgreens each had close to 10,000 stores in the US, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods each had fewer than 500 locations. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2hE202Ia--bGjg0TcQ3QnwcE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2...
- colanderman 7y agoNah I think the more interesting metric would be total sales to populations served by both CVS and one or both of TJ and WF. There may be many more CVSes, but, owing to their small size, there are also many more CVSes serving a given population than there are WFs and TJs, such that those populations have the ability to choose one or the other.
- colanderman 7y agoI'm not sure. Each individual TJ's and especially WF store is much larger than the grocery section of an individual CVS. Even the smallest TJ's I've been in (Back Bay) is larger than the largest CVS grocery section I've been in (3 aisles?). I would expect the per-store figure to be obviously in TJ's/WF's favor. I feel like the most appropriate metric would control for total population served (to discount both the fact that WF and TJ's don't exist everywhere CVS does, and that there are more CVSes per capita than the others where two or more of the three exist).
- basseq 7y agoSorry, to clarify, I’m surprised my per-store calculation isn’t higher for WF/TJ. As you point out, the food aisles at CVS are minimal versus an entire store.
- grayed-down 7y agoA little "gee-whiz" tidbit along with some new-age virtue shaming; a good start to the day indeed. Sometimes a drug/convenience store is just a drug/convenience store.
- te_chris 7y agoWeird that metro supermarkets are so rare in the US. All over the EU in major cities people do most of their shopping in small, well-stocked (for their size) supermarkets.
- sonnyblarney 7y agoConvenience. Grocers should take note. In Canada the corollary is 'Shoppers Drug Mart' and ever since they merged with the national grocer chain, I can get >50% of my groceries i.e. milk, bread, cheese, meat (I mean none of it is super high quality but often good enough) because it's across the street! And there is no lineup.
- purplezooey 7y agoAlways buy my Elsinore there
- sonnyblarney 7y agoTake off eh. Rosie la Rose.
- rb808 7y ago> With CVS selling more groceries than Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s combined WF and TJ are niche supermarket chains, its just another dumb headline. https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-offline-grocery-market-share-of-leading-grocery-retailers-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-offlin... But my fear is growing...
- radcon 7y agoI've noticed a similar thing happening with prepared food. If there are Wawa stores in an area, there usually aren't as many sandwich or salad places nearby as you'd expect. Where I work, your options are basically Wawa or bottom-tier fast-food chains (McDonald's, Taco Bell, etc.). I really wish there were more health-oriented quick-service options (even a Chipotle would be nice), but I don't think they can compete against a place like Wawa since it's good enough for the vast majority of people. For people scratching their heads wondering what the heck Wawa is, I have no idea what the West Coast equivalent would be. Sheetz is another similar chain on the East Coast, if that rings any bells...
- mac01021 7y agoI live in New England and have never heard of Wawa or Sheetz.
- my_username_is_ 7y agoWawa is a chain of large convenience stores, mostly in the Mid-Atlantic region. They typically have a sandwich counter inside, which I think is most comparable to having an in-store Subway. Ask someone from Pennsylvania or New Jersey what they think of Wawa. In my experience, their eyes generally light up and they start raving in a way that most people don't talk about a gas station convenience store.
- frosted-flakes 7y agoIt's because they have real food, whereas most gas station convenience stores only sell junk. 24 hours a day, you can get hot soup, quesadillas, sandwiches, salads, burritos, etc. in a matter of minutes for a reasonable price. There's really nothing else like it.
- mac01021 7y agoSounds like a 24-hour diner.
- TrueDuality 7y agoI'm not sure WholeFoods and Trader Joes are good representations of grocery stores nationwide. Both are classified as "Specialty and natural food stores" and have drastically fewer stores than the supermarket chains.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoThis is part of what I was in the middle of commenting. This article seems like it's trying to force together a narrative from unrelated datapoints. TJs is one of the smallest grocery store chains and WF is just a bit bigger, meanwhile CVS is the largest drugstore chain. It is also unclear to me how "retail food marketshare" is measured. Is it just comparing overall revenue among chains that sell groceries? Sales of, specifically, grocery food items? Share of people who have shopped for groceries at these stores? Just because someone buys a grocery item from CVS does not remotely imply that CVS is their primary grocery store. The USDA has better numbers representing the market. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/retailing-wholesaling/retail-trends/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/retailin...
- throwayEngineer 7y agoLet me know when CVS beats Walmart in grocery sales.
- Theodores 7y agoInteresting that even if you put fresh produce in a 'food desert' that people don't buy it. I wonder if a lot of this has to do with how family life is going. It is not the 1960's any more and we don't have the whole family sat around the table at dinner time with mum having been home all day keeping the house in order. For people who don't have a dining room and people to cook for, why lovingly prepare a meal from fresh produce when junk food can be eaten instead? Price isn't everything. Neither is cooking skills or familiarity with what vegetables look like. Ready meals rule in an atomised society.
- asdff 7y agoIn the 1960s mom might have started dinner 3 hours before it hit the plate, before anyone else got home. Even recipes listed as 'quick' take at least 20-30 mins to prep, call it another 30 mins to eat, and then 15 mins to clean. In a world where wages are stagnant while housing costs rocket, and both parents need to work, free time is at an all time low. Not a lot of people have that kind of time to prepare a healthy meal, especially when they get home exhausted from work or have to get ready to work second or third shift, and might be trapped in a car two hours a day. Who has time to shuck corn, mash potatoes, and peel rutabagas? It becomes far more attractive to pop in the take and bake lasagna and throw the tin out afterward and actually have some time to spend with your kids before you put them to bed.
- Symbiote 7y agoHave the larger American grocery stores opened small convenience stores? This has happened in several European countries. For example, in the UK Tesco has opened many "Tesco Express" shops in towns and cities. They are fairly small, but they can take advantage of Tesco's huge distribution system to stock a wide range of products, including fresh food. Prices are the same as the large shops, but the 20% of products they stock are the dearer ones.
- sandworm101 7y ago>> A representative of the company, which launched an initiative in 2014 to become the first pharmacy to quit selling cigarettes, indicated via email that they see food as the next frontier. Wow. What leadership. It only took a couple generations for a place that sells medicine to stop selling cigarettes. It should be only a quick thirty or forty years before they stop selling the deep fried salt cakes. Are they still selling homeopathic "remedies"? There are lots of pharmacies in this world. I seriously doubt CVS was the first to do anything. Somewhere out there, probably in Utah, there had to be a pharmacy that didn't sell cigarettes prior to 2014.
- elektor 7y agoSan Francisco was the first city in the US to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies back in 2008.
- psadri 7y agoHas anyone attempted a mobile grocery store that drives to food deserts on a fixed schedule? It could say be a container with a single aisle, stocked with the basics and a checkout at one end.
- ctab 7y agoThese exist in Los Angeles, primarily serving Latino neighborhoods: https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-produce-trucks-20140219-m-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-produce-trucks-201402...
- simonsarris 7y agoI don't think so, because "Food deserts" are what happens when the demand for ideologically congenial explanations for socially inconvenient facts greatly exceeds the supply. There is an assumed causal directionality which turns out to not be supported. Most places are food deserts not because market forces don't work there, but because they do: People in those areas do not want to buy fresh vegetables and raw ingredients for cooking. They prefer to buy packaged/processed foods, regardless of cost or health comparisons they are making, or not making. This makes traditional grocery stores less worth it, so they leave if they can't make do. There's a lot of literature on food deserts (as typically stated) being more or less a meme since 2015, here's one example with a couple studies to back it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-easy-access-to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-ea... > Another study, published this week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, looked across the country and found that no more than a tenth of the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the availability of a nearby grocery store. The education level of the shoppers, for example, was far more predictive. And so on. So no I don't think your idea would work particularly well past the novelty stage :(
- psadri 7y agoThis is disheartening. I can see how once people switch to junk food, for lack of availability or other reason, it becomes hard to go back. Junk foods are designed to be addictive (salty, fatty, convenient,...)
- nix0n 7y agoIn Massachusetts, convenience stores and gas stations seem to be the only things open at night. I wonder if grocery stores do better in places like upstate NY where the grocery stores are also open 24hr.
- donretag 7y agoIn one neighborhood I lived in in NYC, the only local supermarket closed down to make way for a Walgreens. They tried to reassure the community that they would stock staples like (terrible) bread and milk, but obviously no fresh food like vegetables. This neighborhood was not a poor one. Million dollar condos (forget houses), all around.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoThe core problem is zoning. NYC makes it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to find an acceptable site for a large-format grocery store. In Manhattan, all recently built grocery stores have had to be in basements to work around restrictive zoning: https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1054518549971111936 https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/105451854997111193... However, there are only so many buildings with acceptable basement layouts, and only so many neighborhood that are profitably enough to merit the additional capital and operational cost of a supermarket in a basement.
- ricardobeat 7y agoDoes it have to be worse quality? If anything, a more uniform distribution of stores should allow development of pretty tight local supply chains, that could provide fresh(er) food.