Kansas City poured millions into a grocery store. It still may close. KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was the lone tomato in the produce bin that nearly made Marquita Taylor weep. She’d stopped in her neighborhood grocery store, the place that was cause for celebration when it opened seven years ago. Area residents had long lived without a decent supermarket on Kansas City’s east side, and KC Sun Fresh was the city’s attempt to alleviate a lack of access to healthy food in its urban center. But the store, in a city-owned strip mall, is on the verge of closure. Customers say they are increasingly afraid to shop there — even with visible police patrols — because of drug dealing, theft and vagrancy both inside and outside the store and the public library across the street. KC Sun Fresh lost $885,000 last year and now has only about 4,000 shoppers a week. That’s down from 14,000 a few years ago, according to Emmet Pierson Jr., who leads Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that leases the site from the city. Despite a recent $750,000 cash infusion from the city, the shelves are almost bare. “We’re in a dire situation,” Pierson said. As grocery prices continue to climb and 7 million Americans face losing federal food assistance, more cities and states across the country — in Illinois, Georgia and Wisconsin — are experimenting with the concept of publicly supported grocery stores as a way to help provide for low-income neighborhoods. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has attracted attention for his campaign pledge to combat “out-of-control” prices by establishing five city-owned supermarkets that he says will pass savings onto customers by operating “without a profit motive.” Yet these experiments, like the one in Kansas City, often don’t account for social issues that can make success even more challenging. Critics say the efforts are unrealistic regardless because grocery stores have such slim profit margins and struggle to compete with the prices offered by big-box chains like Walmart. High-profile projects have failed in recent months in Florida and Massachusetts.
It's a great idea if they will be the only place that takes food stamps. No more Red Bull, Frito's, Pepsi, Ho Ho's, and ice cream.
The yearly interest cost from the 15 trillion in new debt Trump will have racked up will cost more than the 112 billion a year spent on food stamps but poor people buying Red Bull and Fritos is a bigger priority to yall
Millionaires and billionaires getting more millions and billions is not money well spent. Red Bull and Fritos maybe junk food but its still food.
Red bull is mostly water,sugar and caffeine.Should water,sugar and caffeine/coffee be prohibited? Fritos corn chips Should corn,corn oil and salt be prohibited?