COMMUNITY FOOD ENVIRONMENT
ENACT Strategy: Incentives for Store Owners
Provide training and incentives to small storeowners underserved areas to carry healthier food items, such as fresh produce
Too many low-income Americans do not yet have access to full-service grocery stores, and therefore depend on small neighborhood stores for most of their daily food needs. These stores often do not have the expertise, space, or equipment to properly stock fresh fruits and vegetables; as a result, produce quality and selection is usually poor. Further, many of these stores rely heavily on alcohol and tobacco sales to drive their profits, a practice which contributes to serious public health challenges already facing many communities. This food environment is inequitable and must be changed. By providing incentives and training to store owners, local activists can impact what is being sold and thereby positively influence customers’ consumption patterns.
Characteristics of training and incentives offered to store owners include:
- Training in the selection, maintenance and storage of fresh produce and other perishables
- Technical assistance in implementing and maintaining fresh produce sales systems
- Financial and other aid to enable necessary store improvements and upkeep
- Tax benefits to store owners stocking healthier foods/beverages
- Small business loans to store owners looking to improve their offerings
- Facilitations of bulk purchasing of healthier products
- Zoning rules to promote stores with healthier products
- Collaboration between owners and other organizations
Good Neighbor Program: San Francisco, CA
Literacy for Environmental Justice established the Good Neighbor Program, which incentivizes local merchants to limit in-store advertising of unhealthy products, as well as to increase fruit/vegetable offerings and decrease alcohol/tobacco stocks. In 2007, California adopted Good Neighbor as a statewide model.
Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH)
The NYC FRESH program provides zoning and financial incentives for the establishment and retention of neighborhood grocery stores in underserved communities in Northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens.
Healthy Bodegas Initiative: New York, NY
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is working with the Bodega Association of the United States to bring healthier food products to neighborhood stores. The Initiative includes both “Moooove to 1% Milk” and “Move to Fruits and Vegetables.” Bodegas participating in “Move to Fruits and Vegetables” receive a free start-up order of locally grown carrots and apples, which they then sell to customers with a “buy-one-get-one-free” discount.
Healthy Stores: Providing and Promoting Healthy Food Choices
The Healthy Stores project has been implemented in diverse communities across Canada and the United States, including Baltimore, the White Horse Apache Reservation in Arizona, and Hawaii. Through a series of store-based interventions, Healthy Stores improves store environments by changing food offerings and actively promoting healthy products.
The Food Trust: Healthy Corner Store Initiative
The Healthy Corner Store Initiative includes environmental change, social marketing, nutrition education in local schools, technical training and assistance with corner stores, and research to reduce the incidence of diet-related disease and obesity in low-income communities.
D.C. Hunger Solutions works to improve the food environment in low-income neighborhoods, by collaborating with corner store owners to increase their capacity and willingness to stock fresh and healthy foods. This document outlines the findings and recommendations that came out of a study of local corner stores, and also provides various tools for use in other communities.
Healthy Corner Stores: The State of the Movement
This report examines the successes and challenges of existing projects through the Healthy Corner Store Network. The report identifies priority areas for advocates and provides a three-stage strategic plan to engage new partners and move toward substantial, long-term improvements in the selection, quality, and price of foods sold in corner stores.
Good Neighbor Best Practices Guide
Developed by Literacy for Environmental Justice, Good Neighbor Best Practices Guide lays out the steps for a community to establish a corner store conversion program, discusses the Good Neighbor Program experience, and outlines practices that have proved to be useful in both day-to-day operation and programmatic development.
Neighborhood Groceries: New Access to Healthy Food in Low-Income Communities
This report from the California Food Policy Advocates outlines the problem of access to healthy foods, and provides market-based strategies to improve the nutrition environment.
This online tool from PolicyLink offers strategies for improving access to healthy food in underserved communities. While there are challenges to increasing healthy food retailing, there are also many examples of how these challenges have been overcome. This tool discusses three of the most promising strategies: developing new grocery stores, improving the selection and quality of food in existing smaller stores, and starting and sustaining farmers' markets.
“Getting to Grocery,” a new guide from Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP) is designed to help advocates access local government resources to bring grocery stores into low-income communities.
This new website, developed by the South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) Initiative, addresses healthy food access in low-income, resource-poor communities by transforming existing corner markets in areas where junk food abounds and supermarkets and groceries are scarce. The tool also offers user-friendly how-to’s of market makeovers and youth-generated videos about South L.A.’s food desert. The site is a helpful guide, providing repository of information, best practices and lessons learned in creating healthy food retail.
The Fresh Food Financing Initiative
The state of Pennsylvania has implemented legislation to support the establishment of supermarkets in underserved communities in Philadelphia. The Fresh Food Financing Initiative outlines specific requirements to ascertain funding for stores or communities interested in improving the nutrition environment of local areas.
Amendment to Expand the Number of Green Carts
This New York City amendment formally recognized that access to fresh produce affects fruit and vegetable consumption in low-income neighborhoods. In response, it increased the number of permits for food carts that sell fresh produce (“green carts”) in neighborhoods that report low fruit and vegetable consumption, prohibited “green carts” from selling foods other than produce, and planned for implementation, inspection, and enforcement of the program
Healthy Food Purchase Pilot Program
This California bill required the State Department of Health Services to develop a “Healthy Food Purchase” pilot program to increase the sale of fresh foods and vegetables in low-income communities
This ordinance requires new grocery stores to provide a variety of fresh and healthy products. All new groceries must sell three out of the four following categories of food: vegetables and fruits; meat, poultry, fish and/or vegetable proteins; bread and/or cereal; and dairy products/substitutes.
California Food Policy Advocates
California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA) is a statewide public policy and advocacy organization dedicated to improving the health and well being of low-income Californians by increasing their access to nutritious and affordable food.
The Healthy Corner Store Network promotes efforts to bring healthier foods into corner stores in low-income and underserved neighborhoods. The Network brings together community members, local government staff, nonprofits, funders, and others across the country to share best practices and lessons learned, and to develop effective approaches to common challenges. Here, you can also access descriptions of the many different organizations participating in the Network.
PolicyLink believes that “where you live affects how you live.” Among other issues, PolicyLink focuses on improving access to healthy foods—particularly in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, whose residents often do not have access to full-service grocery stores
Evidence Base
Snacking in Children: The Role of Urban Corner Store
This study shows the large contribution that snack foods (chips and candy) and sweetened beverages in urban corner stores make to calorie intake among urban youth. It makes the case that advocates should take into account the corner store environment and its significant effect on energy intake.
This study, by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and PolicyLink, found much higher obesity and diabetes rates in communities with many convenience stores and fast food restaurants than in areas where fresh produce and full-service grocery stores are accessible.
The Availability and Cost of Healthier Food Alternatives
This study compared the availability and cost of standard and healthier market baskets of food in community stores in various neighborhoods. The researchers found healthy foods are less available and more expensive in community stores in low-income neighborhoods, and that the higher cost of the healthier market basket may be a deterrent to healthier eating among very low-income consumers. They recommend that public policies take the food environment into account in order to develop successful strategies to encourage the consumption of healthier foods.
Jetter, K.M., & Cassady, D.L. The Availability and Cost of Healthier Food Alternatives. American Journal of Preventative Medicine (2006), 30(1), 38-44.
Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access/Opportunities through Food Retailing
This report is from the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place. It provides a comprehensive overview of current inequality in access to healthy foods, and then highlights three promising strategies for improving the food environment—improving the selection and quality of food in existing smaller stores, developing new grocery stores, and starting/sustaining farmers’ markets.
This study evaluated a pilot intervention to increase the availability and sales of healthier food options in Baltimore corner stores. Findings demonstrated that, when small corner stores in low-income neighborhoods stock and promote healthy foods, customers buy those foods more often.
Song, H.J., Gittelsohn, J., Kim, M., Suratkar, S., Sharma, S., & Anliker, J. A Corner Store Intervention in a Low-Income Urban Community is Associated with Increased Availability and Sales of Some Healthy Foods. Public Health Nutrition 2009; April 30: 1-8.
Hartford Food System Healthy Food Retailer Initiative
This Initiative, a partnership between the Hartford Food System and local retailers, was established to increase access to healthy foods. After one year, the Initiative had 40 participating stores and had been able to shift 8% of junk food inventories to regular groceries.
