Hi,
Search "grocery store" on Google Maps in a major US city. Most areas return results quickly.
Move to certain other neighborhoods of the same city and the pins largely disappear. Not at the edge of the metro. Inside it. Sometimes close to areas with dense coverage.
The documented term for this is food desert. Maps does not prove the phenomenon on its own, but it makes the gap visible and locatable in a way a statistic does not.
What seems harder to explain is why those gaps persist in areas where some form of demand presumably exists. Thin margins, real estate constraints, store format economics, basket size, shrinkage risk: these are often cited as factors. Whether any combination of them fully explains the pattern is less clear.
Some operators have tried to address it. Results seem mixed.
Is there a viable business model here that has not been seriously attempted, or are the structural constraints genuinely too difficult without some form of external support?
Some US city neighborhoods return almost nothing when you search for grocery stores on Maps
byu/Due-Bet115 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Due-Bet115
3 Comments
If there was a way to extract profit from these food deserts companies like Kroger Albertsons Walmart etc would do it. One of the biggest issues not mentioned in your post is logistics and shipping. Grocery stores need frequent rotating inventory shipments and getting it out to a rural location where a food desert exists is too expensive to the point there’s no profit to be made. Food deserts are a big problem but it’s not as easy as just slapping a store there and opening up shop
I’ve tracked this issue over the years. The general issue I’ve seen is misalignment between government, private, and consumers. The incentives just aren’t there no matter how centralized the attempt is. I wonder if drone delivery is the answer.
Most folk in those areas make a monthly run to the nearest Walmart and Costco. Since groceries run with thin margins I’d imagine the volume from low income individuals is not enough to sustain. Plus competing with low prices from those chains is tough. It’s why most mom and pop grocery stores disappeared. People would rather drive to save a few dollars and get everything in one place. Also now with delivery they can get their groceries from Walmart directly