Browsing by Subject "food access"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    An on-campus community grocery store: A social purpose business model for Paul Quinn College
    (2013-04-19) Vanderburgh-Wertz, Darrow
    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Paul Quinn College (PQC) has a vision for becoming an engine for economic and social change in the community, transforming the lives of residents in PQC’s under-resourced neighborhood while providing invaluable learning experiences for PQC students. To start, Paul Quinn College wants to focus on addressing the neighborhood’s most basic need – access to healthy food. A small historically black college in Dallas, TX, Paul Quinn College (PQC) is located in a food desert neighborhood – a low-income community with low access to fresh fruits and vegetables. PQC has already begun to address the community’s need for healthy food by starting the WE Over Me Farm on campus, but Michael Sorrel, President of PQC, wants to do more. To develop a strategy for creating healthy food access, PQC asked me to answer the following policy question. 1.1 Policy question (Section 2) How should Paul Quinn College create a social purpose business for healthy food access that spurs sustainable economic development in the surrounding under-resourced community? 1.2 Recommendations (Section 8) To create access to healthy food, spur community economic development, and provide educational opportunities to PQC students, I recommend that PQC pursue a small, limited-assortment format grocery store with an auxiliary business to supplement the grocery store’s revenue. I recommend that PQC build an 8,000 square-foot full-service store on the proposed on-campus site. Such a store is large enough to offer a full array of products and achieve some economies of scale in its sourcing. To capture the portion of the immediate market necessary to become financially viable, the PQC store should use its social mission to distinguish itself from its competitors, making itself a store of and for the community in the following ways. • PQC should focus on offering those products that are not available at nearby stores – fresh produce, quality dry goods, and healthy prepared food. • PQC should build a commercial kitchen into the grocery store to prepare quality food for a full-service deli. • Sourcing, where possible, from local producers will distinguish the PQC store from its competitors as well as increase the store’s beneficial impact on the local economy and the natural environment. • The PQC store should hire local residents, pay living wages, and offer benefits. • To gain traction in the community and develop customer loyalty, PQC should offer quality customer service and health education services, such as nutrition education. • To help ensure profitability, the PQC store should have an auxiliary business with higher profit margins, such as a catering business, a rentable commercial kitchen space, or socially responsible retail financial services. 1.3 Methodology (Section 3 and Appendix B) My strategy for answering the policy question included the following four major components. 1. Background research and a review of the relevant literature. (Section 4) 2. A grocery store market study of PQC’s neighborhood. (Section 5) 3. Case studies of related businesses and organizations. (Section 6) 4. Grocery store income statement under different scenarios. (Section 7) 1.4 Market study and financial analysis findings (Sections 5 and 7) As shown in Table 1.1, Highland Hills is much lower income than the United States as a whole with only $24,000 in median household income compared to $50,000 nationally. Area households spend about half as much on food for home consumption (food bought in a grocery store) than the national average and in total the neighborhood spends over $14 million each year on food at home. As shown in Table 1.2, residents within a 5-minute drive of PQC and not within a five-minute drive of a full-service grocery store spend about $8.2 million on groceries. Residents spend only $300,000 within this community, leaving $7.9 million in potential local revenue. With an 8,000 square-foot store, PQC would need to capture 35% of this surplus to generate typical grocery store revenue. To achieve $2.8 million in sales, each area household would need to spend about $18 per week at the PQC store.
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    Identifying barriers to sustainable food production by low resource producers and purchase by low income consumers in Washington and Beaufort Counties, North Carolina
    (2014-04-25) Hill, Kim; Zhang, Harry
    Serving the interests of our client, Resourceful Communities of the Conservation Fund, our project investigates ways to better connect low-resource producers and low-income consumers of fresh produce in 31 low-income counties in NE North Carolina. To better characterize barriers rural producers and consumers face to produce and access healthy food, we conducted three separate analyses. A general linear model statistical analysis based on the USDA Food Environment Atlas data was used to identify significant demographic and socioeconomic variables that affect food access at the macro-level. For a qualitative analysis, surveys and interviews were used to define barriers producers and consumers face on the intra-county scale. Using Geographic Information Systems, a spatial analysis was developed to understand spatial patterns of food deserts and access barriers. The qualitative and spatial analyses were focused on two low-income counties: Beaufort County and Washington County, NC Community stakeholders, local food producers, consumers, and grocery retailers were interviewed. The statistical analysis focused both on 31 target North Carolina counties and on the entire Eastern Coastal plain. Two general linear models revealed that persistent poverty counties and counties experiencing population loss were more likely to experience little or no access to grocery stores. Race was also a factor, particularly within North Carolina where minorities are more vulnerable to food insecurity. Both Washington and Beaufort Counties exhibit a high level of economic and demographic stratification. Two-thirds of consumers from the survey had problems stretching their food budget, and identified a weekly food box at low or no-cost as the best intervention. Retail grocery stores already can and do buy local food. However, retailers buy locally according to the season and price. Major barriers to connecting low-resource producers and low-income consumers were identified as the decrease in the number of small farms, increasing bureaucracy, high cost of entry, and historical divisions between ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Using the geographic and socio-economic barriers, the spatial analysis identified three food deserts, in SE Beaufort County, NE Beaufort County, and SW Washington County and the main drivers for each.
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    Improving Access to Healthy Food in Durham’s Food Deserts: A Policy Analysis
    (2014-04-25) Tucker, Dylan
    The USDA categorizes food deserts as low-income census tracts with poor access to fresh produce. This lack of access to healthy food has been linked to public health problems such as obesity, diabetes, strokes, and cardiovascular diseases, leading to higher disease rates, health bills, and mortality rates within food deserts. Today in Durham, over 43,200 residents live in food deserts; this is 16.2% of the county population, and 16,800 more people than in 2012. To address the growing food desert problem in Durham, this report will develop a set of policies detailing how the city government along with private businesses can improve food access. The policies considered will target ways to improve access, specifically to locally sourced produce, in order to promote local agriculture and businesses as well. Furthermore, the policies will focus on short-term access and only those that do not overlap with federal food desert policy. Four policies will be analyzed: (1) the status quo, (2) added benefits to Electronic Benefit Transfer (food stamps) and Women, Infants, and Children benefits for shopping at local markets, (3) establishing new farmers’ markets in food deserts, and (4) establishing mobile markets operating in food deserts. They were developed based on case studies of other municipal actions to improve food access, and interviews with local stakeholders to apply them to Durham. Each policy will be analyzed based on its expected costs and benefits, its political feasibility and actors required for implementation, equity concerns, and the policy’s improvability and adaptability.