California Gives a Big Boost to Corner Stores that Sell Fresh Produce

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“The first thing you see [when you walk in the door] is the produce case,” said Anmar Talib, who runs Jalisco Market, a small market in East Oakland, California. That case is stocked with the essentials, ordered two times a week: onions, tomatoes, bananas, greens, and a host of other fresh fruits and vegetables.

His customers were “really, really excited” when he brought fresh produce into the corner store, which is otherwise stocked with snack foods and some shelf-stable household essentials. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he added, reflecting that he wants to feed his family well, and wants to do the same by his neighborhood, which is clearly eager for fresh foods.

Anmar Talib stocks the fresh produce fridge at the Jalisco Market in Oakland, California. (Photo courtesy of Saba Grocers Initiative)

The store is a participant in Saba Grocers, an East Bay initiative that connects store owners with refrigeration for fresh produce and distribution so they can keep those fridges stocked. Talib stressed that both were critical for him; he had tried buying produce in bulk for his customers, but was quickly overwhelmed with food waste because he couldn’t buy in small volumes. Saba lets him order what he needs, on a schedule that works for him.

Saba is supported in part by California’s Healthy Refrigeration Grant Program, administered by the state’s Office of Farm to Fork. The program, which offers grants to individual stores as well as organizations, is using corner stores and small markets to expand access to fresh foods for residents of communities experiencing food apartheid, a shortage of access to fresh, diverse foods affecting some 17.4 percent of Americans.

The state has been expanding the program since its inception in 2018; it awarded $2.8 million the first year, $1.6 million the second year, and then a 2021 bill allocated $20 million to healthy corner stores for 2022. But whether that will be enough to really tackle food access in a meaningful way across the state is yet to be seen.

The grants help bridge a gap between what store owners want to offer their communities and what they are able to do on their own. “Many of the stores don’t have any kind of refrigeration that would allow them to sell fresh produce,” said Juan Vila, a senior associate with the Community Food Retail Team at the Food Trust, who is based in San Jose. Once stores have refrigeration in place, they’re encouraged to prioritize California-grown produce, including greens, nuts, and fruits. In Talib’s case, demand is growing quickly enough that he anticipates expanding his produce refrigeration by the end of the year.

A Popular Intervention, with Mixed Results

Healthy corner store programs like this one or the Food Trust’s well-established nationwide network are rooted in making it easier for consumers to access fresh food in the hopes that it will motivate dietary change in low-income communities facing elevated rates of diet-related illness. With interventions intended to expand fresh food options, the more communities are engaged, the more successful the program, which is one reason why corner and convenience stores can be a good option; store owners know their clientele well and can adjust offerings to meet expressed needs, rather than making stock decisions from a generic playbook developed outside the community.

“These places are really central to communities,” said Rochelle Butler of San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization. She works with stores in rural California, where residents often work on farms, but have notoriously low access to fruits and vegetables themselves. “One person regularly shops over half an hour away. She told us, ‘I am so excited that I don’t have to drive over the hill and 10 miles down the road to get fresh food,’” added Butler. For stores and customers alike, the program also helps build community, and survival during the pandemic.

Refrigeration isn’t the only change: Stores can use the grants to add signage, advertise fresh products, and leverage double up programs, which allow customers to double their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. But success is heavily dependent on building rapport and trust. “[Store owners] have been comfortable because we speak their language, we’re from their community, a lot of us will interact at mosque and social events,” said Lina Ghanem, Director and Founder of Saba, on how she connects with other store owners.

All this sounds promising, but evidence for such programs is quite mixed. Some researchers report success with healthy corner store programs, while others have found them ineffective; overall, the landscape of conversations about food apartheid is changing as researchers and advocates realize that distance from a grocery store is not the sole determiner of diet. Other factors can include available time, disability status, family size, social relationships, and personal preferences, which may not be solvable with broccoli at the corner store. And research suggests that in some communities, residents are simply in the habit of going further afield, whether relying on transit, personal vehicles, or rides from friends, to access a wider variety of foods. (This tendency might partly explain the recent closure of Community Foods Market, the first full-service grocery store in West Oakland). The incredibly wild spread in results may also simply reflect that healthy corner stores work better in some areas and contexts more than others, and are not a one-size-fits-all public health intervention.

Offering Culturally Relevant Foods

The need for culturally relevant foods is also a critical element of programs like these. Sometimes known as culturally specific, sensitive, or appropriate foods, these are staple foods in the diet of a given community, a big concern in a state with as many immigrant communities as California. Mexican-American residents might look for different staples than Hmong Americans, or immigrants from Sudan, for instance. A 2010 study from the American Dietetic Association noted that even in immigrant neighborhoods, culturally relevant foods weren’t always available, posing a potential barrier to eating fresh foods for people who shop close to home. But the structure of healthy corner store programs like the one in California encourages store owners to connect with their customers and find out what they want—especially in the case of immigrant store owners who are already deeply engaged with their communities.

Fresh produce at Mercado Las Palmas. (Photo courtesy of Food Trust)

In addition, Saba’s Ghanem said a successful intervention must support immigrant store owners as well as customers. “In terms of equity, it’s not just residents having trouble, it’s also businesses having trouble accessing healthy foods,” she added. The stores the group works with are limited by access to distributors, not just customer tastes. Distributors won’t deliver to small stores with even smaller orders, forcing owners to pick produce up at a warehouse or cash-and-carry facility, adding time and complexity to the task of stocking fresh produce. Saba addressed this issue by simply becoming a distributor, offering a growing list of almost 90 items and delivering them to their partner stores; their model is so successful that Talib noted his customers say his produce is fresher than other area stores.

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