On November 9, 2012, Mayor Jim Cahill led a ribbon-cutting at the Fresh Grocer, a 50,000 square foot supermarket in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was the city’s first new full-service supermarket in a generation, the latest nine-figure project spearheaded by the New Brunswick Development Corporation.

The supermarket would be the anchor of the $105 million Wellness Plaza development (along with a state-of-the-art private gym and a 1,275 space parking garage), the mayor explained. It would provide unprecedented access to healthy, affordable foods for thousands of the city’s low-income residents, and is located within a 15-minute walk of 75% of the city’s residents. In addition to nearly 300 temporary construction jobs to build the site, 200 of the Fresh Grocer’s 300 new employees lived within one mile of the store.

“We’re not just a supermarket. It’s some ways, we’re a community center,” explained the Fresh Grocer CEO Pat Burns, taking pride in his company’s ability to work with low-income residents in urban communities to help create a supermarket that best serves their needs.

To that end, the New Brunswick location would provide ethnic foods that cater to the city’s minority communities, partner with a local non-profit to sell food created by New Brunswick residents, offer a free shuttle service for those who shopped there, and provide job training and nutrition programs for employees.

With the cut of a ribbon, New Brunswick was no longer a food desert.

A year and a half later, the Fresh Grocer abruptly closed.

The Need

As is the case with urban areas across the country, New Brunswick has serious issues of food access, particularly in its low-income neighborhoods. These areas, largely Black and Hispanic, have below-average employment rates, education rates, and household incomes, and have fewer two-parent households—all factors that can contribute to higher rates of obesity and food insecurity.

29.3% of the city’s households do not have cars (with a disproportionate share of those households almost certainly coming from the lower-income neighborhoods), meaning that many of them are limited to shopping at whatever food stores are in their immediate area.

Having lived in the heart of that neighborhood, I am familiar with the food stores available: There are dozens of bodegas and corner-stores, most of which do not carry any fresh meat or produce, only packaged foods. An informal survey I conducted in 2012 revealed that many of these stores are family run or owned, with employees living in the neighborhood. There are also a handful of larger markets and groceries that have meat counters and produce aisles, but they do not have the purchasing power to match the lower prices of a big supermarket.