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Minneapolis helps corner-store owners encourage healthy lifestyles in “food desert” communities

Thanks to the Healthy Corner Store Program, Neighborhood Grocery in South Minneapolis now boasts fresh produce.

Image credit: Photos by Tate Carlson

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Walk the aisles of an average corner store and you encounter the usual suspects: packaged snack food, candy and soft drinks—not exactly the makings of a healthy meal. But to those whose main source of groceries is a neighborhood convenience store, shopping—and by extension, eating—healthy isn’t always a matter of choice.

Minnesota is rife with urban, rural and suburban food deserts, defined by the U.S. Healthy Food Financing Initiative as low-income areas where residents have limited access to supermarkets, often because of transportation and financial issues. According to the Initiative’s data, sections of North, Northeast and South Minneapolis and East St. Paul (as well as suburbs like Coon Rapids and Bloomington) number among the Twin Cities’ urban food deserts, with percentages of low-income residents with low access to grocery stores as high as 49 percent in some regions. Despite our abundance of large grocery stores, urban farmers markets and community gardens, only 32.9 percent of adults in Minneapolis consume the federally recommended number of fruit and vegetable servings per day, according to 2008 data from the CDC.

SEE OUR MAP OF THE TWIN CITIES' FOOD DESERTS

Even after the Minneapolis Staple Foods Ordinance—the first of its kind in the country—passed in 2008, requiring all stores with grocery licenses to carry a minimum number of fresh foods, Minneapolis still finds itself on “worst food desert” lists alongside Detroit, New Orleans and Harlem.

Last June the Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support (working through its Statewide Health Improvement Program) wrapped up a yearlong test run of a new initiative, the Minneapolis Healthy Corner Store Program, that strives to ensure low-income customers have consistent access to affordable, healthy food—and that small stores can stay in business providing it.

An ordinance—and with it the threat of fines and a revoked grocery license—might seem an easy fix, but in 2010 a city assessment of 35 convenience stores revealed the majority of those stores still were not complying. It wasn't necessarily because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know how. Leveraged by this assessment and by the 2009 addition of fruits and vegetables to the WIC program (a federal food-voucher system in which many neighborhood stores participate), MHCSP debuted in May 2010 after soliciting applications from 90 stores (13 ended up applying). The pilot program offered free merchandising, food handling and point of sale support to five stores in North and five in South. In return for the assistance, vendors agreed to comply with the ordinance and to let the city evaluate their stores for a year.

Aliyah Ali, a project specialist for MDHFS who launched and coordinated the program and who serves as a liaison between participants and the city, explains that getting fresh, healthy foods in stores was only the first step in the battle. “The [compliant stores] had produce in the most random spots—on top of coolers, under shelves,” remembers Ali.

Rabie Yousfi has owned Neighborhood Grocery, near Franklin and Chicago Avenues, since 2003. Yousfi was skeptical at first but now admits his store needed help to keep up with the new WIC requirements and keep his customers happy—while ensuring he kept his grocery license.

“It’s not that we weren’t interested [in carrying fresh food],” he says. “It was that we weren’t consistent.” With Ali’s help, Neighborhood Grocery was able to innovate low-cost improvements: demos and recipes, better display methods and capitalization on existing assets (for instance, repurposing a drink cooler as a produce cooler).

MHCSP also helped vendors learn to navigate the world of wholesale produce and to find affordable distributors. Ali explains small-store owners generally can’t afford wholesale because of spoilage and high case costs. Splitting cases drives up costs further, with the increase passed on to customers. “That totally defeats the purpose of the program,” she says.

While half of the stores left the program (for reasons ranging from fire to ownership changes), store owners who stuck with MHCSP were able to maintain the new displays and expand the variety of foods offered while increasing sales. Ali points out Lowry Food Market, near Lowry and Lyndale Avenues in North, as one of the program’s “stars”; like Yousfi’s store, it now boasts plenty of fresh produce, dairy products and juices in addition to snacks, cellphone services and cigarettes. Yousfi estimates sales went up 60 to 70 percent between 2009 to 2010, noting there were “no negatives” to his experience and that he is considering applying on behalf of his other two stores. “Our sales went up and we can now be more consistent. And it’s a convenience for the customers: If someone comes in for fresh tomatoes, they’ll find the milk and the other products.”

Ali says, contingent on funding, round two of the MHCSP will start next year and that Hennepin and Ramsey counties have similar programs in the works. “The need is out there,” she says. “We’re ready to get moving.”