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Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

theguardian.com

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Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#41

Post by colanderman »

ezekg wrote: post #7

I 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.

Ditto. 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.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#42

Post by derefr »

p49k wrote: post #31
momokoko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.

Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF…

> extremely difficult if you’re poor

I mean, I live in an area where there’s a Whole Foods within two blocks’ walking distance of two other grocery stores (one mid-market, one down-market.)

I think this isn’t actually that uncommon; people don’t see Whole Foods as actually satisfying the demand for “a grocery store” in an area (as it doesn’t carry many of the things people expect a larger grocery store to carry—it may have decent produce, deli, bakery, etc. sections, but its grocery section is rather lacking in anything other than up-market “bougie” brands) so if there’s an existing other grocery store, and then a Whole Foods also gets built, that doesn’t much decrease the traffic to the other grocery store to the point that it would close down.

The only problem is property developers marketing a new neighbourhood that only has a Whole Foods as being “close to a grocery store”, and people believing them and moving there. That Whole Foods was probably already there before the neighbourhood was, serving as an outlet to travel to for the larger region that that the new neighbourhood is located in; but the other parts of the region were being served by grocery stores located closer to them, and this new neighbourhood actually doesn’t have one of those.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#43

Post by mc32 »

samayylmao wrote: post #14
manojlds wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with Why so?

If 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…

Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t get a bus ticket. All it means is you are deliberate in your shopping and planning.

You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone.

Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless.

Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to I made do.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#44

Post by bluntfang »

TheLoneTechNerd wrote: post #5
brokentone wrote: post #2

Why 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.

Yeah 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-tr... for example). CVS, on the other ha…

>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.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#45

Post by Dylan16807 »

p49k wrote: post #31
momokoko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.

Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF…

Is the 365-brand selection smaller than what you get at CVS, though?

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#46

Post by ghc »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

That'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.

I think maybe urban stores might skew the stats a bit. There's so much demand for groceries within a short walk of all the local condo buildings that my local Walgreens has set up a fresh sushi counter. The cheaper, giant grocery stores are all located in low income areas where land is cheap, but there's 8 CVS, 5 7-Eleven, and 2 Walgreens within a quarter mile walk of where I live and work.

So when I run out of flour, I have a decision to make: would I rather sit in traffic for 30 minutes, wait for instacart/amazon fresh delivery, or go to CVS/Walgreens? I suspect there are many people like me who pay the markup every day because it's less of a hassle.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#47

Post by momokoko »

p49k wrote: post #31
momokoko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.

Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF…

> your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods

Absolutely false. That is the entire stated purpose of the 365 brand. What 365 does not cover is produce and meat. Meat is definitely more expensive at Whole Foods as they do not use it as a loss leader like other stores. I also sometimes wonder if one of the founders being vegan had something to do with that. Produce at WF is definitely about merchandising. The lower priced produced is very well hidden.

> shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor)

Poor people don't have legs? I was poor for most of my life. I rode a bicycle to the grocery store. And the 365 brand stuff is mostly non-perishables. You can shop for non-perishables every couple of weeks.

Admit it. You just do not like the brand and identity the Whole Foods represents. It has nothing to do with the actual products or prices.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#48

Post by momokoko »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #45
p49k wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF…

Is the 365-brand selection smaller than what you get at CVS, though?

No. Not even close.

https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/product-...

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#49

Post by colanderman »

basseq wrote: post #27

This 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/spreads…

I'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).

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#50

Post by dev_dull »

mc32 wrote: post #43
samayylmao wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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…

Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t get a bus ticket. All it means is you are deliberate in your shopping and planning. You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone. Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless. Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to…

There’s a weird misconception about poor people here. I’m willing to bet the vast amount of people on SNAP have a car and a job. Being poor doesn’t require an abject state.
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