Grocery stores in cities: the failure of the "15 minute grocery store"

For the last few years, the concept of the "15 minute city" has been touted, the idea that you can meet most of your needs in a 15 minute walkshed--a radius of about three quarters of a mile ("How '15-minute cities' will change the way we socialise," BBC).

Conceptually, I think it's a great approach, especially in terms of the urban design, placemaking, concentration and communitarian elements, and the provision of the necessary transit levels of service to backstop it. 

But it doesn't work in terms of how the retail sector and the delivery of entertainment at the local scale is organized, especially for grocery stores and pharmacies. 

Sure you could have corner stores. Then again, I was looking at a convenience store yesterday wrt testimony I'm preparing for a matter in Salt Lake City, and they were selling milk for $6.09 per gallon, when it's about $3.50 at supermarkets. 

From a retail standpoint, the 15 minute city works best in dense very high income areas.

Photo: Trent Nelson, Salt Lake Tribune.

Salt Lake.  Last fall, less than two years after opening, a small grocery store closed in the Marmalade district of Salt Lake, on the city's near westside ("Lee’s Market to close its 400 West location in Salt Lake City on Friday," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Lee's Marketplace was opened by a small supermarket group that is a member of the Associated Food Stores cooperative.  They operate a number of regularly sized stores outside of Salt Lake City proper.

This store, on the ground floor of an apartment building, was small, but well stocked, and the firm extended sales prices on featured items to this store as well--many companies that have a mix of larger and smaller stores don't extend special pricing to the small stores.  

It opened just before covid and that stunted it ("Salt Lake City’s Marmalade neighborhood get its first grocery store in decades," SLT).

Salt Lake also has the Harmon's chain, which is upscale and has three stores, one in the city, that are significantly smaller than a traditional supermarket.  There is another firm, the Corner Store, which has two small stores in the area, with a branch nearby in the Gateway development.

There are other mainline (large) supermarkets nearby--within a couple miles, including Smith's owned by Kroger, Lucky's, a Rancho--Hispanic, and the Downtown Harmon's, which is an exquisite store--smaller than a normal store, but large enough, with premier bakery, meat, and seafood departments, along with a cooking school, grill for eat-in, and other features, a form of which are present in most of the other Harmon's locations.  Plus the area isn't that far from the corridor with a Target, Walmart, Costco, and a restaurant supply store open to the public.

Even though the Lee's was outside of our neighborhood, we shopped there occasionally because it is a couple blocks from the house of close friends.

People commented that the store closed because rents must have increased, or because of shoplifting from students at West High School across the street.

I responded, it's obvious they didn't have enough business and that's why they closed.  From the article:

Badger wrote that the “decision to close the store is the result of the lack of volume coming into the store from the surrounding areas, the COVID-19 pandemic, and public accessibility.”

The market was employing “the urban store format you would find a high-density city like, New York, Chicago, or Boston was a test for our company,” Badger wrote. “Unfortunately, we found this style of shopping is not yet conducive to the Salt Lake City area.”

First, even though the immediate neighborhood didn't have a supermarket, it's not like people didn't eat, and therefore, already had relationships with existing grocers.  So the market needed to do ongoing, serious marketing.  I was thinking back to when I was a child in Detroit 50+ years ago--back then, stores didn't insert weekly circulars in the local newspapers, they delivered them door-to-door.  Lee's probably needed to do something like that. 

Second, the store wasn't particularly well located.  The neighborhood has a nascent commercial district, although it's disjoint and not set up for success from an urban design standpoint, and that's not where the Lee's was located.

Third, opened in anticipation of lots of new multiunit buildings and residents, the construction and renting of such units hasn't moved fast enough to boost the patronage of Lee's, if people even knew they were there.

Basically, to survive Lee's needed minimal even zero rent for years, until the customer base built up to the point where the store could survive.

As it is, I am amazed at how many grocery stores there are here, in part a function maybe of people eating in more than the national average.  There are 20 grocery stores within a five mile radius of where we live, and even more slightly outside that distance.  Including ethnic and specialty stores, major discounters, a restaurant supply store that sells to the public, etc.  So many more options than we had in DC (although I do miss Aldi).

Lesson: as much as people like me advocate for expanded urban grocery options, the reality is that to make stores work requires a lot to go right.  And this is true in all of the other examples below.

Wrigleys was one of the supermarkets that existed during my childhood in Detroit.  Except for Kroger, based in Cincinnati, all those stores--Wrigleys, Packers, Great Scott, Chatham, Farmer Jack's--have closed.

The kind of intense door to door marketing I remember from my childhood is necessary these days to alert area residents that a store even exists, given that most people don't read local newspapers and other forms of local media that would inform them that such a store exists.

Salt Lake Food Coop initiative.  Similarly, for a number of years, at least five, there's been an effort to  create a food coop in the city.  I don't see how it can succeed given the high level of grocery store penetration and the failure of small artisan food businesses here ("Small businesses closing in Salt Lake," KSL).    Although an issue with the food businesses is the rising cost of ingredients.

Interestingly, there already is a cooperative in suburban Murray, I don't see why they aren't working on just opening a branch in the city.

Like with the Good Food stores mentioned below, from the outset, food cooperatives tend to focused on a niche audience.  That being said the success of cooperatives in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and the upscale Coopertunity Market in Culver City ("Revisiting Takoma Junction and the Takoma Co-op development issue | A chance to start over") shows success is possible.  But to me

Richmond, Virginia: Market @25th is unprofitable too, but has a deep pocketed investor.

I think I've mentioned about Market@25th in Richmond.  Like the stores in DC and Salt Lake, it's part of a mixed use development.  And like the DC example, it's part of an urban revitalization effort.

It's a social enterprise like store, but it's funded by a philanthropist, with the aim of being profitable ("Richmond’s Market At 25th Shaped By History, Needs Of Church Hill Residents," Virginia Public Media).  

Which is a good thing because it's lost tons of money ("Church Hill's new grocery store has lost millions in 6 months, but owners are committed to 'the market with a mission'," Richmond Times-Dispatch).  From the article:

[Steve] Markel, vice chairman of the Henrico County-based specialty insurer Markel Corp., and his wife, Kathie, announced in 2016 that they would bankroll the construction of a grocery store in the city’s East End.

The area is home to some of the city’s poorest families. Residents have lower life expectancies than in wealthier parts of the city, a disparity Markel said necessitated investment aimed at improving health outcomes.

To that end, Markel helped finance the mixed-use development at 25th Street and Nine Mile Road. It includes 42 apartments, retail and office space and a new culinary school that J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College plans to open in 2020.

The 25,000-square-foot grocery store is the centerpiece of what Markel said this past spring was a “philanthropic” venture.

“The grocery store is really a symbol of creating a healthy neighborhood and a vibrant neighborhood,” he said. “Not only was it about food and vegetables and fruit, it was about jobs.”

If the store were fully nonprofit, or super undecapitalized, it's likely that it would have closed.  Typically, nonprofits don't have the funding to be able to make it through the long period of losses before profitability is attained.

Oakland, California.  Last year, an independent community grocery store closed on the Westside of Oakland ("Why West Oakland’s only full-service grocery store closed after less than 3 years," Oaklandside).  

It was undercapitalized and didn't have enough business to sustain the slow period of growth associated with opening.  Like for the Lee's, the pandemic provided extra hurt.

Photo: Michelle Gomez, DCist/WAMU-NPR.

Washington, DC.  Good Food Market stops selling unprepared food ("Good Food Markets Closes Ward 8 Grocery Store As It Pivots To Prepared Food," DCist).  

Over the years, the nonprofit Good Food Market has opened stores in DC and Prince George's County ("Good Food Markets Open Location in Prince George’s County," Washington Informer), including in DC's Anacostia neighborhood ("Mayor Bowser Celebrates Grand Opening of Good Food Markets in Ward 8," press release).  

They've just stopped selling groceries and are only selling prepared foods, defeating the purpose of opening stores in so called food deserts, as prepared foods cost a lot more than perishable and nonperishable food stuffs.

Opening stores in low income communities.  Many years ago, I wrote this, "In lower income neighborhoods, are businesses supposed to be "community organizations" first?" (2012), in response to an earlier failure of a grocery store attempt in DC's East of the River, by the area's Yes Market Natural Grocery group. 

FWIW, I am an advocate of social enterprise focused efforts in such communities, but they need to be well capitalized and it must be understood that achieving profitability will be very difficult.

Grocery shopping routines.  One of the problems with how advocates think about grocery shopping is they forget that we eat every day.  While it may suck to have to travel to a store, most people have developed patterns and practices of food shopping to accommodate their needs and situations.

Just because a store opens doesn't mean that people change their shopping patterns to patronize it.  And in a city like DC, it may make more sense to provide shuttle services to residents in understored areas to be able to go to the stores in nearby areas--for example on H Street, primarily in NE DC, in a two mile distance, albeit some off the corridor, there is a Walmart, Giant, Whole Foods, Safeway, Aldi, Trader Joes, Harris-Teeter, Streets--an independent upscale market, and a market district.

Rather than funding an undercapitalizesd minimarket, sometimes, at least initially maybe just provide shuttle services to existing grocery stores?