Nation’s First Non-Profit Supermarket Is Picking Up Steam

[thelakelander]

Hmm, would something like this work in Jax's food deserts?

About one year ago, food justice advocates tuned in to a promising remedy for food deserts in the city of Chester, Pa., about 15 miles south of Philadelphia. Could Fare & Square — the nation's first non-profit full-scale supermarket — be a sustainable model in a 34,000-resident city where there hadn't been a supermarket of any kind in 12 years? I covered the grand opening last October, and recently I went back to the post-industrial city to see how the supermarket has progressed.

In Chester, the setting of this week's Forefront on tenant protections in a sinking rental market, 31 percent of residents live below the poverty line. The median household income is $27,546. The bottom income quintile of American households (who make up to approximately $20,000 per year) spend 35 percent of their disposable income on food, while the general population spends 12 percent, according to the 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey. This percentage does not include transportation expenses that families in food deserts habitually incur traveling to supermarkets in other neighborhoods or towns.

Full article: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/nonprofit-supermarket-food-desert-chester-fare-and-square

[IrvAdams]

This concept might just work. Jax is so large, I'm sure there are a number of areas where residents cannot reasonably travel to acquire a decent variety of products.

Also, the Next City website is cool. Thanks.

[sheclown]

Kings Street Corridor!