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

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.

According to a Food Marketing Institute report, investors may spend between $8 million and $25 million dollars on a typical supermarket before any dollars are recouped through profits. This is just one factor that makes it more challenging to open new supermarkets in low-income, underserved areas. With Fare & Square, Philabundance, a Philadelphia-based food bank, decided to tackle this problem with a new model, instead of a traditional supermarket, or a limited-assessment store (like Aldi or Save-A-Lot). The Chester market’s management describes the ideal as a market that provides an array of healthful options and can be a center where residents come for health screenings at special events.

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