
Why Whole Foods Is Moving in to One of the Poorest Neighborhoods in Chicago - adam
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/14/why-whole-foods-is-moving-into-one-of-the-poorest-neighborhoods-in-chicago/
======
rpenm
I've lived in Englewood. I can confirm a lack of quality produce - I'd have to
travel to Hyde Park, Chinatown or the South Loop for that. However, I doubt
Whole Foods will draw too many neighborhood customers away from the
Food-4-Less or Aldi. Price matters.

The Englewood location is probably more about cheap land near the I-90/94,
which links downtown Chicago to the South Side, and south suburbs. This
location is also close to the Hyde Park (University of Chicago) and Woodlawn
neighborhoods, which are more affluent.

~~~
tptacek
Whole Foods doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble setting up shop in more
affluent Chicago neighborhoods.

Moreover: people who live in Hyde Park do not as a general rule drive into
Englewood for groceries (non-Chicagoans: Hyde Park is an upper class white
college town stronghold in the predominantly black south side, and Englewood
has a reputation as one of the most dangerous areas in the city).

I'm also having a hard time imagining anyone getting on the Dan Ryan to get
groceries, given that there's a giant Whole Foods right at the intersection of
the Ryan and the Ike.

If Whole Foods wanted to light up the upper/middle class south side, there are
less "interesting" places to park one; Chatham, maybe, for instance.
Auburn/Gresham.

Regardless, I'm glad they didn't stick it in Beverly. That map of Whole
Foodses in Chicago would have been pretty damning.

~~~
kasey_junk
Not that it impacts your argument in any way, but classifying Hyde Park as
"white" is a little off. It is white in that there is a way higher white
population in Hyde Park than in it's surrounding neighborhoods, and that the
white population is the biggest racial group, but the white population is not
a majority in the neighborhood.

What is accurate to say is that compared to the neighboring areas, Hyde Park
is phenomenally affluent and educated and Englewood exists on the exact
opposite end of that spectrum.

In any case, it stands, having a Whole Foods in Englewood will not attract
Hyde Parkers (especially as they already have 1 high end grocery brand, and
are getting a Whole Foods).

~~~
tptacek
You're right. I edited my sentence to include "college town" and split "white"
from "stronghold".

Hyde Park is a white stronghold in the sense that it, like Beverly, is a south
side neighborhood where white families will happily reside.

"College town" is probably the more appropriate descriptor of Hyde Park.

(I grew up in Beverly, and went to school at Ignatius, so I had a bunch of
Hyde Park friends).

------
fndrplayer13
My wife and I are very much into knowing where our food came from, how it was
raised/produced, etc. As you can imagine, we shop primarily at Whole Foods
(outside of our CSA). We are also interested in making sure we buy these
products at the best possible prices. So we routinely cross-shop at places
like Marianos and even Jewel for these items. Interestingly, the cost of these
types of items are almost always cheaper at Whole Foods than anywhere else. I
think Marianos and Jewel mark these items up much higher because they take up
precious shelf space and tend to move more slowly than the non-organic and/or
mass-produced items. Just something to be aware of. If you're concerned about
where your food came from, Whole Foods is actually not overpriced. If you look
at how European families spend money on groceries proportional to their
income, I think the Whole Foods model is more in line with that than the
familiar American model. I'd have to Google the numbers, but I believe
American families spend roughly 10% of their income on food, whereas Europeans
will spend 15-20% of their income.

With all that being said, surely this is a huge risk on Whole Food's part, and
I'm not quite sure how it will turn out. I enjoy that there is probably some
portion of idealism in this move and I hope it works for both WF and more
importantly the residents.

~~~
tptacek
It might not be obvious if you're a vegetarian (or just minimize meat
consumption), but Whole Foods is not the most cost-effective way to get high-
quality traceable meat. I routinely pay more per-pound for lower-quality
protein at Whole Foods than I do at Butcher and Larder, a boutique whole-
animal butcher.

~~~
fndrplayer13
Yeah +1 that makes a lot of sense. I eat meat 1-2x a month.

------
et2o
This is a really huge deal. Englewood is a hurting neighborhood and community.
These food deserts are real. Children in these areas sometimes grow up eating
out of vending machines because there aren't any alternatives. I'm not a
romantic, but having had some firsthand experience, these situations are
really tragic.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was a package deal with the new Whole Foods
opening in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Food deserts are real, and caused by consumer choice. Giving people access to
health food does not result in an increase in vegetable consumption or a
reduction in BMI.

[http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-
ac...](http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-access-to-
healthier-food-isnt-enough/)

tl;dr; The issue is demand side, not supply side.

~~~
smtddr
Note the last part of his article: _" Access may be necessary, but it’s not
sufficient. Policies that are aimed at just eliminating food deserts may not
work. More needs to be done."_

There are a lot of reasons poor people don't eat healthier; supply is
definitely part of it. But not just supply of food, supply of time as well. A
poor person is probably working some physically taxing job and is just too
tired to cook a healthy meal. Or too tired to get to the market selling
healthy food, or... a million other things. It's not just "demand", it's not
that they just don't want to eat healthy. Some don't even know fast food is
unhealthy. Don't forget, we have people on HN defending fastfood
hamburgers..... so imagine the potential confusion about nutrition in a poor &
less educated community.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_But not just supply of food, supply of time as well. A poor person is
probably working..._

This is a myth. Poor people mostly don't work at all, and those that do
typically work only part time.

[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2012.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2012.pdf)

 _Some don 't even know fast food is unhealthy._

Some evidence and context for this is sorely needed. Note: if lack of
information were really the cause, then you'd expect plastering healthy eating
information all over the NYC subway would fix the problem. Did it?

The best explanation I can come up with is the following. People with low self
discipline become poor. People with low self discipline become fat and eat
badly. They also don't exercise much and engage in other fun but harmful
behaviors (unprotected sex, drug use, drinking to excess). But that's a
naughty explanation, even if it fits the data quite well.

~~~
smtddr
What is it that you have against underrepresented people?

Every post about them you're there to say _" Nope, it's their own fault."_. I
only give you the benefit of the doubt because tptacek has you listed in his
HN profile. What did you experience/witness in your life that has caused you
to hold these views?

    
    
      1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541664
      2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076550
      3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1214954
      4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/31110324@N03/5370871466/
      5. http://www.datatau.com/item?id=3338
      6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8255165
      7. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2129845

~~~
yummyfajitas
I have nothing against "underrepresented people", or any particular feelings
toward any class of humans not defined by particular actions.

My views towards poor people are the same as my views towards myself and my
friends; most of my own problems are my fault. This is doubly true when
statistics suggest a correlation between bad behaviors and negative outcomes.

Note the vast majority of my posts are merely discussion of the world as it
is, not an expression of mood affiliation (" I'm so empathetic to favored
groups, bask in my moral virtue"). And if you actually want to fix things
rather than morally posture, you need to do the same.

Further, note that in at least one of your links, I'm advocating in favor of
the poor (India being my goto example) and against the rich (american "poor"),
at least if you read my post through thr lens of mood affiliation. But I guess
"those people" don't count.

~~~
thizzbuzz
Being honest, you come off as extremely out-of-touch with the experience of
poor people in the US. Have you had any close relationships with poor people?
I don't mean an educated person that is down on their luck, or college
students eating ramen, but someone who grew up poor and is still poor now.

Most people here probably agree with you that poor people tend to have worse
impulse control. But you seem totally unaware of how significantly stress,
trauma, or desperation affect impulse control. It's more than just stress
about paying the bills. I tutored reading at an intercity elementary school
and there were kids there who had family members incarcerated or murdered,
homes foreclosed, parents making the local headlines for child abuse, etc. One
boy I taught had to move out of his house because someone shot it up in a
driveby looking for his older brother. A girl from a refugee family had 19
siblings and a physically abusive, alcoholic father. My coworker taught a boy
whose parents were both in prison for murder. It was not uncommon to see
little kids wearing RIP shirts for friends and family members. These stories
are so much more common than you'd think. I'm not being hyperbolic, look at
gunshot and homocide maps for Chicago in a single year:

[https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Yt65uE9YlMk/UR7-1mGIo8I/A...](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Yt65uE9YlMk/UR7-1mGIo8I/AAAAAAAAXMs/jrRcS2LRx6c/w506-h362/chicago_crime.png)

[https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?oe=UTF8&source=embed&ie...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?oe=UTF8&source=embed&ie=UTF8&msa=0&mid=zYNyPnlZp6R8.kj48YzHpUupw)

Sure, a phenomenally resilient person can make it out of horrible
circumstances, but the average person isn't able to. I personally don't think
I would have fared well if I grew up in a bad environment. As a younger person
I was angry and depressed enough already without the reality of hearing
gunshots nightly, losing family members, facing systemic discrimination, going
to bed hungry, etc. I had a great family and I still fucked up along the way
sometimes. I also had a support system that allowed me to take the risks that
made me independent and not poor today.

I somewhat disagree with your last point too. I grew up in the US but now live
in a very poor country. The struggle is bad in both countries, just different.

~~~
yummyfajitas
When I live in the US I mostly live in poor neighborhoods. I've known many
poor people. And I've observed a number of poor people get off their ass, get
a job, and stop being poor. Let me point out two issues:

 _I don 't mean an educated person that is down on their luck, or college
students eating ramen..._

If poverty were actually the cause of assorted bad things, then why wouldn't
college students experience those same bad things? Clearly something else is
at work.

You provide one possible alternative factor: crime. Perhaps we need more
police in certain regions, drone powered surveillance, or other such
solutions. That's a problem, but it's a) unrelated to the question of whether
time spent working prevents poor people from cooking and b) minimally related
to poverty.

~~~
thizzbuzz
Because most college students are not poor in the sense that they grew up poor
and still are poor. And college students who grew up poor are much more likely
to leave college midway through, which is an obvious effect of dealing with
ever-looming stress, health problems, and trauma that people from a poor
background are much more likely to deal with.

It's impossible to go to college or enter the workforce and just switch off
all the bad things in your past and present. From my experience a lot of my
college friends who left midway through had family problems, often financial
or health problems. Again this is stuff that poor people go through much more,
and it negatively impacts their ability to hold down a job, finish college,
and succeed in general.

It's a complicated issue but you seem to have no desire to understand it
further than "get off your ass, get a job, and stop being poor".

And I strongly disagree that the US needs more police.

Surveillance is inevitable and if data and access are open, then I'm
relatively at ease with it.

Edit: Crime is minimally related to poverty? I don't know how you can justify
that statement.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_And college students who grew up poor are much more likely to leave college
midway through, which is an obvious effect of dealing with ever-looming
stress, health problems, and trauma that people from a poor background are
much more likely to deal with._

So the claim is not that being poor is directly an issue, but that poor people
are more likely to have other issues.

You seem to strongly disagree with me even though I said basically the same
thing:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613583)

Relevant:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

------
marincounty
Never thought I would stick up for Whole Foods, but their price on the
basics(milk, butter, some bread, flour) is cheaper/same price than Safeway.
Their bulk food section is overpriced. I'm not sure why they overprice the
bulk foods; I think they figure we can't do the math? Examlpe: Lumberg rice is
cheaper than WF bulk rice? If anyone from Whole Foods reads this, and I
imagine everyone of these posts are going to be dissected my management--get
rid of the Security Guards. If you are that conserved about theft, use
undercover guards.

~~~
dcre
> Get rid of the security guards.

I assure you, they will not.

[http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community](http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community)

------
Animats
I could see putting in a Trader Joe's, but Whole Foods? Whole Foods is
overpriced silliness. "Organic salt", stuff like that.

~~~
tptacek
Tim Harford tried to myth-bust this a few years ago. Yes, you can buy Maldon
sea salt at Whole Foods, but you can also buy (more prominently displayed)
Morton kosher, and it's priced the same was it is at Safeway. There are
organic lemons that cost $1/unit more than conventional lemons, but there are
also conventional lemons.

The way you tend to spend more money at Whole Foods than you would at Safeway
is, you go for staples and end up buying premium stuff. So: don't do that.

The "Whole Paycheck" trap is mostly a problem for people who aren't price
sensitive when picking out groceries.

~~~
gumby
And let's not forget that the prices at those corner stores aren't low either!

------
larrys
"an 18,000-square-foot Whole Foods."

18,000 is actually small for a supermarket and in fact the average Whole Foods
is 38,000 square feet:

[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/whole_...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/whole_foods_market_inc/index.html)

------
mynameishere
They only mention SNAP in passing, but I guarantee it features large on the
spreadsheets back at HQ. Everyone I've known who was on it seemed a little
nostalgic about buying expensive food they wouldn't normally. (However, my
sample size is two).

~~~
GabrielF00
The average monthly SNAP benefit per person in Illinois is $138/month, or
$4.60 a day. You're not going to be living large on it.

[[http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/18SNAPavg$PP....](http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/18SNAPavg$PP.pdf)]

~~~
buttcoinslol
There are 2,040,053 SNAP recipients in IL, at an average of $138 per month,
total benefits equal $281,527,314. Per month. Even if only a quarter live in
Chicago, that's still nearly $1 billion a year in SNAP benefits in Chicago
alone.

~~~
mentat
A point that one might be able to gather from this is that Whole Foods could
be trying to capture some of that by being present where it is used.

------
rmason
Whole Foods also opened the first full supermarket in downtown Detroit.
Imagine a city of 700,000 people without a single supermarket.

Course they received millions in subsidies to do it. But the program was out
there for awhile and no other supermarket chain would take the chance.

Whole Foods success was followed by other chains. However the other chains
took the subsidies and built their supermarkets out on 8 mile which is the
dividing line between Detroit and the suburbs. While the stores are
technically within Detroit the suburbs are right across the street so their
risk was much lower.

~~~
bluedino
>> Whole Foods also opened the first full supermarket in downtown Detroit.
Imagine a city of 700,000 people without a single supermarket.

Don't spread this lie. I know food deserts are a popular myth but there are
plenty of grocery stores in the city of Detroit. Sure, they might not have a
Kroger or Meijer but there are plenty of smaller grocery stores like Save A
Lot and ethnic markets.

People don't really think everyone in Detroit lives on a diet of snack foods,
$1 menu burgers, and fruit flavored soft drinks, do they?

~~~
arturnt
I shop organic, typically at farmer's markets, and actively cook. I lived in
Toledo for a little while and visited Detroit. While you have access to
supermarkets in that part of the country the access is very poor. I ate a lot
of fast food simply because fast food is within 5 min and a super market is
often times 30 min. Produce is typically poor quality and imported.

~~~
maxerickson
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket/@41.6476485,-...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket/@41.6476485,-83.5350869,13z)

It doesn't look that bad. Did you somehow miss Kroger and Meijer are
supermarkets?

------
michaelchisari
With the shift in other supermarkets carrying more organic and "luxury" items
like Jewel and Mariano's purchasing Dominick's locations and building stores
that carry a wide range of organic to normal shelf items, Whole Foods isn't
the high end gem it once was. You can now get the things you got there at
regular stores (that have more acceptable pricing). My guess is this is
putting pressure on Whole Foods' growth strategy.

~~~
larrys
"My guess is this is putting pressure on Whole Foods' growth strategy."

Agree.

And it will be interesting to see the exact product mix of that store is vs.
the one that is located where I am.

My guess (in addition to what the article says) it will be quite different.

At a local WF "clone" that I also frequent (just opened) last night I bought
some raw pistachios. I didn't even look at the price. When I got to the
register they were $13.50 for 8 ozs. (I'm sure WF has a similar product.) My
point is that's easily an 1 hour's after tax wage or more in that area. (Maybe
2 hours..) Hard to believe the product mix is going to include items like
that.

Anyway growth wise WF could come up with a new brand (which is typically what
would happen) but here they decide to use the same premium brand name because,
and this is important and in addition to any PR benefit, the people who would
shop at an upscale whole foods won't know what goes on at this Whole Foods (if
it in fact would even matter to them). It could look like a warehouse and
they'd never know that. Not the same as with a consumer product that makes it
into the channel and could destroy your brand name.

------
tptacek
Putting a Whole Foods in Englewood is fraught for the same reason it would be
in Humboldt Park (well, minus the gentrification issue).

Go to Jimenez or Del Rancho and check out the produce section: it's comparable
in size to a Whole Foods, but stocked very differently. You can find a small
tub of lemongrass or buddhas hand citrus at Whole Foods, along with a small
tub of jalapenos and maybe a plaintain. You can't find buddhas hand at Jimenez
at all, but fresh peppers are stacked floor to ceiling.

Produce variety at Jimenez is poorer than Whole Foods. But quantity is much
greater, and quality is higher. Jimenez does a better job at stocking the
ingredients people in their neighborhood actually use.

Similarly: you can get cheap-cheap-cheap top round or ground pork or skirt or
chorizo at Del Rancho. You can't get hanger steak, air-chilled cage-free
chicken, or 15 varieties of chicken-apple sausage.

Having a serious grocery store in Englewood is an unalloyed good thing, no
matter whether they choose to stock Organic Valley Sour Cream or Salvadoran
_crema_ (the crema is better, by the way). But if Whole Foods really wants to
help the south side, they're going to have run a different kind of Whole
Foods. It would be really neat to see them try.

------
fiatmoney
"Nor is it a bet, by Whole Foods, on neighborhood change."

Although, if the neighborhood did happen to gentrify, as has been the goal of
the Emanuel administration for Chicago as a whole, that would be a happy
coincidence.

~~~
johnloeber
Normally, gentrification is a slow creep that happens on a block-by-block
basis. This does not apply to Englewood. The Whole Foods is being built
essentially in the heart of urban poverty in Chicago.

------
gumby
This is super exciting. I was disappointed by one pull quote: "This is not an
experiment. African American people are not an experiment,” Thompson says.
“People need to stop thinking like that, that we cannot afford the things that
people in other communities have.”

The fact is: this is a poor community, and the accepted wisdom is that they
can't have nice things. This is indeed an experiment to show that that
accepted wisdom is _wrong_. There's nothing wrong with doing experiments: we
do them all the time, whether it's testing drugs or the work of economists
like Esther Duflo, these are crucial. And I sure hope if throws sand back in
the face of those who have given up on these communities.

------
ZanyProgrammer
I hope that (assuming the demographics really do skew poor and food stamps)
that the cashiers aren't mandated to harass the cusomters with WFs bullshit
charities. I used to work at the Palo Alto WF for 4 years, and a couple of
times a year there were periods where it was mandatory for cashiers to ask
customers about WFs latest bullshit charity schemes-like the Whole Planet
Foundation, etc. It was bad enough doing that in rich PAMPA, but hopefully the
store management has a bit more flexibility opening up in freaking Detroit
(assuming its not a store heavily visited by 28 year old start up employees
with obscene amounts of money).

------
sremani
I do not know about Chicago or Englewood, so I do not have much to comment on
this particular stuff, but riding on the theme - I work across a Whole Foods
and across the street are many low-income apartments, I did not find many
people from those apartments shopping or working at whole foods. If their
desire is to address food deserts this store has to be completely different
from their standard configuration and unless that is not the case, this is
either well-intentioned yet misguided effort or calculated low cost land
acquisition.

------
rahij
On the topic of Whole Foods:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609515)

------
keithpeter
" _The neighborhood was targeted by the city as a "food desert," although
corner stores are common and discount-grocer Aldi's is just down the street._"

My corner shops and my local Aldi must be unusual. No problem sourcing fresh
produce at reasonable prices (UK).

I wonder if anyone is looking out for the corner shop people.

~~~
wodenokoto
Isn't that what the 'although' in the sentence means? That the neighborhood
was designated as a food desert, despite having stores that sell fresh
produce?

~~~
keithpeter
OK, so 'food desert' means something different to what I thought it meant.

------
raldi
Can we get a "saved you a click" summary?

~~~
RyJones
Ten million dollar subsidy by the city of Chicago, high SNAP redemption flow
in Detroit store in similar situation.

------
waynecochran
Favorite quote: “No one steals vegetables.”

