The Big Idea: Municipal-Owned Grocery Store
With rising grocery prices and increasingly sparse options, more places are considering municipal-owned grocery stores to create equitable access to food.
J. Patrick Patterson
mu • nic • i • pal-owned gro • cery store
noun
1. a public option for foodstuffs, funded by a city and operated to serve communities left behind by the private sector
2. Medicaid, but for milk and eggs
Where’s this coming from?
Across the country, entire neighborhoods are losing their grocery stores — and not just big chains, but independents as well as family-owned shops and markets.
It’s part of a broader pattern of food access disappearing where it’s needed most, often in poorer neighborhoods, larger Black or Latino communities and areas with a history of disinvestment. Some companies, like Walmart and Kroger, promote themselves as a “community partner” only to turn around and cite the very same conditions as reasons to leave.
In the South and West Sides of Chicago and parts of Detroit or Kansas City, Mo., grocery stores have left, citing low profits, crime or aging infrastructure. Other times, stores simply consolidate or move to wealthier suburbs.
Have city-run stores been tried?
Yep! But mostly in rural areas. Baldwin, Fla. — a town of about 1,300 — opened its own grocery store, in 2019, after the last independently owned one closed. The store was run like a public utility, emphasizing fresh food, fair prices and community jobs. Though the store struggled to remain open and eventually closed, its presence provided a glimpse of what local access to fresh food can do for a community.
St. Paul, Kan. — a town of about 600— lost its only grocery store in the 1980s. Residents relied on volunteer-run efforts and a local café to fill the gap until 2013, when the city stepped in. Within a few years, the small grocery was even turning a profit.
Chicago has floated the idea, and a city-commissioned study from the Economic Security Project, released in 2024, determined a municipal store would be feasible with funding, coordination and a long-term commitment.
How feasible is it really, then?
Grocery retail is a hard business, with thin margins and tricky supply chains, so places would be taking on real financial risk. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration eventually shifted to building a network of public markets for food vendors, farmers and small grocers to sell directly to the community.
Still, private markets don’t guarantee access to food, and small towns like St. Paul have made it work.
J. Patrick Patterson is the Associate Editor at In These Times. He has previously worked as a politics editor, copy editor, fact-checker and reporter. His writing on economic policies and electoral politics has been published in numerous outlets.
