About 40 million people in the United States don’t have access to a full-service grocery store

What food is available has everything to do with the food stores that are available.

When the food store is a full-service supermarket, such as the ShopRite in Parkside, it usually means you will have access to a wider variety of higher-quality and lower-cost food, explained Michelle Schmitt, a senior policy analyst at the Reinvestment Fund (RF) as she walked around the bustling 15-year-old supermarket.

Not having the same access to high-quality food as you do to chips, fast food and soda can contribute to an unhealthy eating pattern that can ultimately lead to chronic disease.

Schmitt is the main author of the 2023 update to the Limited Supermarket Access Analysis, which determines who is and is not well served by a grocery store. The official definition for limited supermarket access is 5,000 people where residents need to travel almost twice as far to a full-service supermarket compared with residents in block groups with similar population density, and above-average incomes. It is the fourth update since 2010 and the first to include Alaska and Hawaii.

The big takeaway: About 40 million Americans live without easy access to healthy food options.

Bringing food access back

Take the Parkside, Belmont and Mantua neighborhoods of West Philadelphia. Together, they are home to roughly 48,755 residents. Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated and are 66% Black, and almost half the people had an annual income of $25,000 in 2021, the latest year for which data are available.

While this is the neighborhood many traditional stores would overlook, it is the type of neighborhood that the supermarket access analysis showed was in desperate need of a supermarket.

» READ MORE: FIGHTING FOOD APARTHEID

“I think that the tools that we provide, like the supermarket access analysis, gives the community the data they need to make a strong case for a supermarket,” Schmitt said.

Since 1985, the Reinvestment Fund has raised $1 billion, first to start community-based small businesses and rowhouse owner-arranged grants, federal subsidies, and tax credits, and then for developers to rebuild aging neighborhoods. In 2004, it started to put supermarkets in low income area.

From low access to shopping

Supermarkets were once associated with suburbs, and by the 1970s seven out of every 10 food dollars were spent there. But supermarkets did not place their businesses in low-income communities, which led to real consequences.

The Food Trust published a 2001 report, Food for Every Child: The Need for More Supermarkets in Philadelphia, that said Greater Philadelphia, with 180 grocery stores for 1.5 million people, lacked 70 supermarkets.

There is nothing easy about putting up a full-service supermarket. Before RF puts together a complicated package of funding, it first decides where it should go. The supermarket access analysis gives RF the data for neighbors who want to advocate for a supermarket, “Instead of saying ‘Here’s what you should do,’ ” Schmitt said.

From 2004 until the money ran out in 2010, the RF worked with the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI) and brought Jeff Brown, a fourth-generation grocer, and ShopRite to Parkside to serve 75,000 people.

FFFI attracted more than $73.2 million in loans and $12.1 million in grants that were approved. Projects approved for financing were expected to bring 5,023 jobs and 1.67 million square feet of commercial space. The RF now serves as the national fund manager for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and has provided more than $370 million in grants and loans to healthy food projects.

Schmitt said she wants to make sure food delivery and other novel ways of food access will be a part of the next supermarket access analysis.

“We were finishing the 2024 [analysis] and we never considered the work of grocery delivery. We will have to keep tabs on those bigger trends,” Schmitt said.