
Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers - asudosandwich
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/04/food-swamps-cvs-outsells-trader-joes-whole-foods-processed-shopping
======
AdmiralAsshat
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.

~~~
manojlds
> And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably
> poor to begin with

Why so?

~~~
samayylmao
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.

~~~
mc32
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.

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

obviously not. But anecdotally what I see where I live is that it is a large
enough inconvenience that it makes an impact. If you work 8 hours, then have
to spend 2-3 hours getting groceries you already have a 10-11 hour day not
counting any other commuting you need to do. What if you have kids you need to
get off a bus from school?

trying to blanket say anyone not willing to make that trip just isn't trying
isn't fair.

It is well documented that low-income areas have less access to good
education, healthcare, and other facilities. blaming the residents doesn't
help them improve their quality of life. Not everyone will make it out of
that.

~~~
mc32
Unless you don’t have a fridge, when you have to make a two hour trip for
food, you’re gonna make sure you got just about everything for the whole week.
There might be some milk or egg runs, but in those cases one might pay a
premium once in a while.

We’re not making two hour trips every day after work for food. No poor person
I knew did that when I was poor. I did it mostly on weekends when there was
lots of time.

------
basseq
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/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2hE202Ia
--bGjg0TcQ3QnwcE/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
colanderman
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).

~~~
basseq
Sorry, to clarify, I’m surprised my per-store calculation isn’t _higher_ for
WF/TJ. As you point out, the food aisles at CVS are minimal versus an entire
store.

------
rb808
> With CVS selling more groceries than Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s combined

WF and TJ are niche supermarket chains, its just another dumb headline.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-
offlin...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-offline-
grocery-market-share-of-leading-grocery-retailers-us/)

But my fear is growing...

------
francisofascii
CVS is everywhere. Whole Foods and Trader Joes's are only in a few cities and
usually there is only one. Guessing about 10 times the number of locations.
[https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state](https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state)
[https://www.cvs.com/store-locator/cvs-pharmacy-
locations](https://www.cvs.com/store-locator/cvs-pharmacy-locations)

~~~
stronglikedan
_Guessing about 10 times the number of locations._

More like 20x.

FTFA: _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._

------
TrueDuality
I'm not sure WholeFoods and Trader Joes are good representations of grocery
stores nationwide. Both are classified as "Specialty and natural food stores"
and have drastically fewer stores than the supermarket chains.

~~~
ilikehurdles
This is part of what I was in the middle of commenting. This article seems
like it's trying to force together a narrative from unrelated datapoints. TJs
is one of the smallest grocery store chains and WF is just a bit bigger,
meanwhile CVS is the largest drugstore chain. It is also unclear to me how
"retail food marketshare" is measured. Is it just comparing overall revenue
among chains that sell groceries? Sales of, specifically, grocery food items?
Share of people who have shopped for groceries at these stores?

Just because someone buys a grocery item from CVS does not remotely imply that
CVS is their primary grocery store.

The USDA has better numbers representing the market.
[https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-
prices/retailin...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-
prices/retailing-wholesaling/retail-trends/)

------
sandworm101
>> A representative of the company, which launched an initiative in 2014 to
become the first pharmacy to quit selling cigarettes, indicated via email that
they see food as the next frontier.

Wow. What leadership. It only took a couple generations for a place that sells
_medicine_ to stop selling _cigarettes_. It should be only a quick thirty or
forty years before they stop selling the deep fried salt cakes. Are they still
selling homeopathic "remedies"?

There are lots of pharmacies in this world. I seriously doubt CVS was the
first to do anything. Somewhere out there, probably in Utah, there had to be a
pharmacy that didn't sell cigarettes prior to 2014.

~~~
elektor
San Francisco was the first city in the US to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies
back in 2008.

------
Theodores
Interesting that even if you put fresh produce in a 'food desert' that people
don't buy it.

I wonder if a lot of this has to do with how family life is going. It is not
the 1960's any more and we don't have the whole family sat around the table at
dinner time with mum having been home all day keeping the house in order.

For people who don't have a dining room and people to cook for, why lovingly
prepare a meal from fresh produce when junk food can be eaten instead? Price
isn't everything. Neither is cooking skills or familiarity with what
vegetables look like. Ready meals rule in an atomised society.

~~~
asdff
In the 1960s mom might have started dinner 3 hours before it hit the plate,
before anyone else got home. Even recipes listed as 'quick' take at least
20-30 mins to prep, call it another 30 mins to eat, and then 15 mins to clean.
In a world where wages are stagnant while housing costs rocket, and both
parents need to work, free time is at an all time low.

Not a lot of people have that kind of time to prepare a healthy meal,
especially when they get home exhausted from work or have to get ready to work
second or third shift, and might be trapped in a car two hours a day. Who has
time to shuck corn, mash potatoes, and peel rutabagas? It becomes far more
attractive to pop in the take and bake lasagna and throw the tin out afterward
and actually have some time to spend with your kids before you put them to
bed.

------
grayed-down
A little "gee-whiz" tidbit along with some new-age virtue shaming; a good
start to the day indeed.

Sometimes a drug/convenience store is just a drug/convenience store.

------
brokentone
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.

~~~
TheLoneTechNerd
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...](https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/what-to-buy-at-trader-joes/)
for example). CVS, on the other hand, is a far more general store. They both
sell food, but they're not in the same market segment - so the comparison is
strange.

~~~
dagw
I don't live in the US, but I've been to Whole Foods when visiting and
certainly felt like a perfectly normal grocery store, not too different from
most other grocery stores I've been to. What makes it a specialty store and
why wouldn't you go there to buy a head of lettuce?

~~~
TheLoneTechNerd
"Whole Foods" has earned its nickname of "Whole Paycheck"
([https://www.fastcompany.com/90305918/whole-foods-is-
becoming...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90305918/whole-foods-is-becoming-
whole-paycheck-once-again)) although they've tried various ways of combating
this, some mentioned in that article

------
radcon
I've noticed a similar thing happening with prepared food. If there are Wawa
stores in an area, there usually aren't as many sandwich or salad places
nearby as you'd expect. Where I work, your options are basically Wawa or
bottom-tier fast-food chains (McDonald's, Taco Bell, etc.). I really wish
there were more health-oriented quick-service options (even a Chipotle would
be nice), but I don't think they can compete against a place like Wawa since
it's good enough for the vast majority of people.

For people scratching their heads wondering what the heck Wawa is, I have no
idea what the West Coast equivalent would be. Sheetz is another similar chain
on the East Coast, if that rings any bells...

~~~
mac01021
I live in New England and have never heard of Wawa or Sheetz.

~~~
my_username_is_
Wawa is a chain of large convenience stores, mostly in the Mid-Atlantic
region. They typically have a sandwich counter inside, which I think is most
comparable to having an in-store Subway.

Ask someone from Pennsylvania or New Jersey what they think of Wawa. In my
experience, their eyes generally light up and they start raving in a way that
most people don't talk about a gas station convenience store.

~~~
frosted-flakes
It's because they have _real food_ , whereas most gas station convenience
stores only sell junk.

24 hours a day, you can get hot soup, quesadillas, sandwiches, salads,
burritos, etc. in a matter of minutes for a reasonable price. There's really
nothing else like it.

~~~
mac01021
Sounds like a 24-hour diner.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Except Wawa is explicitly take-away (there are no seats), it's part of a gas
station, and they're everywhere.

------
psadri
Has anyone attempted a mobile grocery store that drives to food deserts on a
fixed schedule? It could say be a container with a single aisle, stocked with
the basics and a checkout at one end.

~~~
simonsarris
I don't think so, because "Food deserts" are what happens when the demand for
ideologically congenial explanations for socially inconvenient facts greatly
exceeds the supply. There is an assumed causal directionality which turns out
to not be supported.

Most places are food deserts not because market forces don't work there, but
because they do: People in those areas do not want to buy fresh vegetables and
raw ingredients for cooking. They prefer to buy packaged/processed foods,
regardless of cost or health comparisons they are making, or not making. This
makes traditional grocery stores less worth it, so they leave if they can't
make do.

There's a lot of literature on food deserts (as typically stated) being more
or less a meme since 2015, here's one example with a couple studies to back
it:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-
ea...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-easy-access-
to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it.html)

> Another study, published this week as a working paper by the National Bureau
> of Economic Research, looked across the country and found that no more than
> a tenth of the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the
> availability of a nearby grocery store. The education level of the shoppers,
> for example, was far more predictive.

And so on. So no I don't think your idea would work particularly well past the
novelty stage :(

~~~
psadri
This is disheartening. I can see how once people switch to junk food, for lack
of availability or other reason, it becomes hard to go back. Junk foods are
designed to be addictive (salty, fatty, convenient,...)

------
donretag
In one neighborhood I lived in in NYC, the only local supermarket closed down
to make way for a Walgreens. They tried to reassure the community that they
would stock staples like (terrible) bread and milk, but obviously no fresh
food like vegetables.

This neighborhood was not a poor one. Million dollar condos (forget houses),
all around.

~~~
alexhutcheson
The core problem is zoning. NYC makes it either impossible or prohibitively
expensive to find an acceptable site for a large-format grocery store. In
Manhattan, all recently built grocery stores have had to be in basements to
work around restrictive zoning:
[https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/105451854997111193...](https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1054518549971111936)

However, there are only so many buildings with acceptable basement layouts,
and only so many neighborhood that are profitably enough to merit the
additional capital and operational cost of a supermarket in a basement.

------
ezekg
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.

~~~
colanderman
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.

~~~
dev_dull
I didn’t even realize I needed to justify periodically buying food there until
I read this thread. As if their success somehow means there’s something
nefarious going on or they’re taking advantage of people. There’s a CVS
_everywhere_.

------
nix0n
In Massachusetts, convenience stores and gas stations seem to be the only
things open at night. I wonder if grocery stores do better in places like
upstate NY where the grocery stores are also open 24hr.

------
Symbiote
Have the larger American grocery stores opened small convenience stores?

This has happened in several European countries. For example, in the UK Tesco
has opened many "Tesco Express" shops in towns and cities. They are fairly
small, but they can take advantage of Tesco's huge distribution system to
stock a wide range of products, including fresh food. Prices are the same as
the large shops, but the 20% of products they stock are the dearer ones.

~~~
rjsw
Tesco Express prices are higher than in the larger stores.

~~~
Symbiote
So I see, I supect my experience compared a big Tesco in a nice area with an
Express in a grotty area.

Apparently the difference is 1-5p on most items, so less of a problem than the
American situation.

------
sonnyblarney
Convenience. Grocers should take note.

In Canada the corollary is 'Shoppers Drug Mart' and ever since they merged
with the national grocer chain, I can get >50% of my groceries i.e. milk,
bread, cheese, meat (I mean none of it is super high quality but often good
enough) because it's across the street! And there is no lineup.

~~~
purplezooey
Always buy my Elsinore there

~~~
sonnyblarney
Take off eh. Rosie la Rose.

------
jhallenworld
Yeah, and at higher prices. CVS is high on the list of Fortune 100 companies
for good reason.

~~~
throwayEngineer
Government lobbying in the medical field, not food sales.

------
ricardobeat
Does it have to be worse quality? If anything, a more uniform distribution of
stores should allow development of pretty tight local supply chains, that
could provide fresh(er) food.

------
te_chris
Weird that metro supermarkets are so rare in the US. All over the EU in major
cities people do most of their shopping in small, well-stocked (for their
size) supermarkets.

