This right here is what Jackson should have addressed. He’d doing nothing to help the people who shop in these two stores by suggesting a boycott of stores that chose to shut down. He is not helping. This is not doing anything to address the needs of those who live in these neighborhoods, nor is he addressing the real issues in these two communities. He’s turned this in to a race issue when it’s not. There are many other black communities all around these two in Memphis, which IS predominantly black. However these communities are ALSO crime-ridden and dangerous. Why doesn’t he address this and work to solve this issue? While we’re at it, those of you who see that these communities are struggling to maintain even large commercial grocery stores, what are YOU doing to help this community? I volunteer at a church charity that passes out hundreds of food baskets every month. I see plenty people manage to get a ride to the church for their food even when they live on the other side of Memphis. I don’t honestly think transportation is as big of an issue as it’s being made out to be. I also know neither of these communities are “food deserts” because there ARE other chain grocery stores in the area and small local stores as well. My last address in Memphis was in the Jackson Avenue area and I can’t think of a single grocery store anywhere remotely within walking distance other than the small Latino owned shops. They seem to be thriving and they are full of fresh produce and meats as well as freshly cooked foods, snacks, and nonfood items. There are several of those same type of stores in the communities that lost their Kroger. So no, it’s not a food desert. It’s not racist. It’s simply two chain stores closing because they didn’t make enough profit for it to be worth keeping open. And that’s sad and it sucks for the people who patronized those Krogers, but this is being treated like a civil rights issue when it isn’t.
Thank you for adding information to the conversation. There were quite a number of links in that article. Yes, one of them pointed to the fact that there were Save-a-Lots in the general vicinity. That is new information that can be considered.
However, Save-a-Lots are not really where you want to go for fresh foods. Whatever with prepackaged stuff, off brand is the same as name brand for all practical purposes, though I think it was a false economy there too. The stuff was cheaper, but it was also smaller portions. I’d have to actually go out and do some comparison shopping to be sure, but I don’t think it was any better value.
When I was struggling with poverty some while back I went into a Save-a-Lot up here, and it was not a pleasant experience. They had a small paltry selection of produce, all of which was miserable and more or less inedible. I’ve been to grocery stores late on a weekend when all the produce is picked over, and only the rotten stuff is left, it looked like they bought up that stuff and put it on the shelves here. It was also the same price as at Meijer. The meats were simply unacceptable. Everything on the shelves was sell by today. Now, sure, you can go a while past the sell by date, but you are fighting the clock, and the stuff at Meijer looks about the same 5 days past its sell by date as this stuff did on the shelf.
Even if they are offering fresh foods, if they are inedible, it’s not going to get people to buy and eat them. If this is the exposure that people have to fresh foods, they will go to prepackaged out of habit even when acceptable fresh foods are available. If Save-a-Lot fresh food is what people are used to, it is no wonder why they eat only prepackaged stuff.
I do find it infuriating, but no more eye opening than a typical iiandyiiii post (that’s a complement, iiandyiiii).
But, governments are made of people, and we can pressure the govt to stop these practices, and for the most part, have. Private discrimination still goes on. It’s pretty easy to discriminate, as long as you aren’t blatant about it.
And it does require an affirmative social effort to right these wrong, and bring the people that have been harmed by our past policies back to where they should be.
What those solutions are is a long debate, but that we need to at least address the problems as being real emergent phenomena that are the result of social policy, rather than simply soley the individual’s fault and the individual’s responsibility.
Both SNAP and EBT both provide revenue streams for a grocery store.
Apologies, I did take that statement as sarcasm in your previous post.
In any case, since most of my contributions here have been responses, it seems that there have been misunderstandings, so I’ll lay out my case here.
The OP says fuck JJ for calling for a boycott. That is the specific thing that I am disagreeing with. I personally don’t feel as though I would respond to the call to boycott in this instance, but as I am already boycotting kroger over much more petty issues (no 24 hour store near me, and the kroger plus card) it is hard to say for sure.
However, even if I don’t act on the boycott, I still think that it is perfectly acceptable to call for it. We as consumers have very little power over what the corporations around us do, the very only thing that we have to influence them is our wallets. And if a company is doing something that we don’t like, our only option is to not support the company in an effort to get them to change their ways. The call for a boycott is a perfectly acceptable use of the first amendment, and it is perfectly acceptable call to action to get corporations to be better for the consumers who support them.
As far as them keeping open unprofitable stores, why not? There are tax benefits to doing stuff like that that I am sure the accountants can find, and I’ve seen a few of the articles linked that claimed that at least one of the stores wasn’t really unprofitable. But, in any case, you have PR. Companies will put out commercials bragging about how much money they’ve donated to some charity or relief project. They are not doing this because they just want to, they are doing it because people will be more inclined to shop at their stores if people feel that the store is a good corporate citizen. Same as in this case, Kroger could have put out a commercial talking about how they had stores that were losing money, but rather than close them, they reinvested in the stores, reinvested in the community. Talk about how they did an outreach to families, and hosted cooking and shopping classes to assist people in making healthier (and more economical) food decisions. If I saw that commercial, I might even forgive them for the kroger plus card and start shopping there again. Then, after they have done this investment in the community, then the store may become profitable again.
Ultimately, corporate behavior is governed by the bottom line. The whole idea behind the boycott is to make it economical to keep those stores open. If they lose business in their profitable stores due to their closing of unprofitable ones, then their bottom line suffers, making it actually be better to continue to lose money on some stores in order to continue making money in wealthier markets.
Finally, this call for a boycott has gotten people discussing poverty and the effects that it has on communities and people in those communities, so even if you completely disagree with the boycott itself, you should still be appreciative that the call for it started this conversation.
And if that lack of support leads to the store closing down, what then? Boycott to keep it open?
You mean, what if the Kroger in the upper middle class neighborhood closes down because the people are boycotting it? Well, I’d be pretty impressed that a boycott would have that much effect.
No, I mean if the people of a lower class neighborhood don’t like the Kroger and stop supporting it and then it closes down. Should they then boycott other Kroger’s in order to keep one open that they didn’t go to enough in the first place?
I’m not sure that we are having the same conversation.
The point of a boycott is to get other people in on the action. To get people who are not effected by kroger’s decisions on what to do with poor neighborhoods to take action.
The people around here have multiple options for fresh food. We have not just one, but 3 krogers within a couple miles of here, and another 3 within a couple more, a meijer, a walmart, an aldi’s, a fresh market, a target, a save-a-lot, a dollar general, plus 6 ethnic markets. If they feel that other people who are less fortunate than themselves should have access to fresh food as well, then they can just choose not to go to one of those many options to send that message.
You said, basically, people could vote with their wallets. Looks like they voted with their wallets and stopped going to the Kroger resulting in that store losing money and closing down. Why would people now boycott other stores in order to keep open a store that already closed due to people voting with their wallets?
I don’t know all the details offhand, but I recall that DC tried to work a deal with Walmart in which they could open several stores in areas they wanted, but they would also open a couple stores in poorer neighborhoods.
Surprise surprise, Walmart reneged on the deal fairly quickly. link.
To your point, I think it is fair to say that cities haven’t figured out how to attract and retain businesses where there’s a social need, but not a business case.
I was not aware that there was a previous boycott of Kroger’s stores that resulted in these being shut down, I thought it was just because it was in a poor neighborhood where people didn’t have lots of money, combined with higher prices due to shoplifting and other negative aspects of crime.
Who called for this previous boycott?
A boycott is not the only way to vote with your wallet. I don’t shop at Walmart, but I don’t boycott them. If enough people where I lived stopped shopping at Walmart, hopefully they will close down and move away.
Looks like enough people stopped shopping at that store, so they ended up closing. The people voted with their wallet. Isn’t that what “voting with your wallet” means? It doesn’t only mean “boycott a store”
Not enough people shopped at that store, so they closed. Boycotting OTHER stores to keep a store that people didn’t go to open seems nonsensical to me.
It was not that there was no one shopping at the store, it’s that the store was not profitable enough for kroger to decide to keep open.
Have you ever heard of a loss leader? It is something that stores have that they make very little or no profit on, or even lose money by selling. They have them in order to get people to come in to buy things that are more profitable.
That would be what these stores that would be kept open in spite of them not being very profitable would be, loss leaders, so that people in rich white neighborhoods don’t feel guilty about shopping at a store that shuts down stores in poor neighborhoods.
I’m not entirely sure what you are misunderstanding about this. It is not the poor people who have very few, if any options for their shopping that the boycott is asking to change their shopping habits. It is the wealthier individuals who have many choices that are being asked to make other choices, rather than to support a store that has made decisions that they may not agree with.
And why do you think the store was not profitable enough to keep open? Because not enough people shopped at the store.
Ok, I’ll buy that the store in the low income neighborhood is a loss leader, sure. But I’m not seeing what the “more profitable” part is. How do they make up the money they lose in the low income neighborhood store?
It’s not that they didn’t shop at the store, it’s that they didn’t have lots of money. They bought the cheap stuff, the stuff on sale, the loss leaders, if you will, but not the high profit items that make a store more profit. It’s not that they wouldn’t have liked to get steak rather than ground round, but they couldn’t afford it.
By not losing money in the more profitable areas when wealthier people stop shopping at Kroger’s in their neighborhood due to their guilt about supporting a corporation that closes stores in poor neighborhoods.
They can also boost their image, as I said, and make it a PR move. Talk about how, rathert han closing these stores, they invested in them and the community. Like I said, that may be enough to give my liberals bits enough turgidity to get me to forgive them for the kroger plus card, then they profit off of my business. Also, if they work to improve the poor neighborhoods that they are in, especially if they use their leverage as a massive company to get some govt action in increasing policing and general services, they may find that the neighborhood has turned around enough that now they are making a profit. The Kroger up here runs cooking classes from time to time to teach well off people how to shop and eat healthy, they can do the same thing for their customers on EBT and SNAP.
I don’t suppose you have a cite for this.
Regards,
Shodan
How is that Kroger’s problem?
What are you looking for a cite for? That the shop was in a poor neighborhood? That poor people don’t have as much money as wealthy people? That higher profit items make a store more money? That people without much money buy cheaper stuff than people with more money? That poor people would like to buy nicer stuff, but cannot afford it?
While I am at it, do you need a cite that water is wet, fire is hot, and the earth is round?
And how did I say it was?
Looks like they prefer to shop at Save-a-Lot.
People are saying that Kroger should be mandated, by government, to operate unprofitable stores.
That makes it Kroger’s problem.
Jackson’s opening his mouth is all that is needed.
Last night, I watched C-SPAN’s rebroadcast of MLK’s funeral, which they aired last weekend. Yeah, Jesse Jackson was there, and it seemed that the CBS cameras, who ran it live at the time, alternated between the speakers, JJ, and Hubert Humphrey who was the vice president. Jackie Kennedy (was she Onassis yet?) was there too.
Anyway, yeah, I :rolleyes: when I saw him leading the march, American flag in hand, from Ebenezer Baptist to the public memorial at Morehouse College.
Back on topic: A Sav-a-Lot supermarket that is located in a poverty-stricken area of my city is closing this summer, although unprofitability does not appears to be a factor. The owner died and his family couldn’t find a new buyer, and they don’t want to run it. AFAIK, I’ve never been in it; the building is quite decrepit and I suspect the inside is too.