|
For
some in rural Illinois, the grocery store down the road is
turning into a dollar store.
Grocery stores, specialty food and convenience stores are
disappearing in rural areas, while dollar stores and Walmart
move in, according to data released by the United States
Department of Agriculture.
Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association
and the Illinois Food Council, said this is not a new
phenomenon.
“This has been going on for several years, frankly,” Karr told
The Center Square. “It frankly became challenging – has become
challenging – to operate a full-service grocery store in more
rural areas, what some might call food deserts – there’s just
not the market force to sustain it.”
As rural populations decline, children move away and the market
density has waned to a point where it cannot support those kinds
of businesses, Karr said.
“You see fewer apparel stores or fewer shoe stores in those same
types of areas,” Karr said. “You just don’t have the number of
customers you need for return visits to make it viable.”
But all is not lost. People are getting creative about how to
source fresh produce and meat, experimenting with grocery trucks
and other unconventional businesses, according to Karr.
“You’re seeing a revival of sorts of the cooperative type of
approach, where you might have a couple communities band
together and create a grocery cooperative that doesn’t have the
same cost pressures necessarily, and they might be more free to
design their product selection because it‘s the consumers
themselves who are running it,” he said. “That doesn’t really
work for a broad-scale operation, but in an example where you
have a couple communities band together, it might work.”
|
|
.png)
