speaking from my own experience

Speaking only from my first hand experiences in Seattle, chain grocery stores are not as numerous in the Slums as they are in the affluent neighborhoods.  And, prices are higher.  And Choices are fewer.  I would add that these observations were from about 1955 to 1995, when I left the Seattle sprawl and moved to the Great Olympic Peninsula. 

The Slum Stores tended to be smaller and grungy compared to their suburban counterparts. 

My point being that the chains had a corner on the market, a captive population.  . 

 Most of the Slum residents depended on their feet or on public transportation, so were limited as to their choices of markets.  If my wife and I did not care for the service or the selection at a particular super market, we simply drove to another store that catered to our needs.  Chain stores understood that this could produce lower profit.  They competed with one another for our business, dressing up their stores, forcing employees to always smile and say, "Welcome to Safeway, may I be of service to you?"  And Super super markets sprang up carrying wider varieties of products most of us never knew existed. 

But the folks trapped in the Ghettos were going to shop at the closest store, regardless of how it looked or how they were treated, or what choices were offered. 

To make it even more difficult, the Metro Transit decided to reduce, and even cut transit service to certain sections of the inner city, opting to run buses to far flung suburbs, even though the ridership was almost non existent in some cases.  Naturally the cuts were made in the slums and the housing projects.  The bus I used to ride from Renton to Seattle, took me through some of the poorer neighborhoods in Southeast Seattle, and this was where most of our passengers boarded the bus.  But after the shake up, my bus zipped right on past those neighborhoods, along a main highway.  Residents needing public transportation, and that meant most of them, had to walk many blocks to reach the main road.  And to help them even more, Metro turned my bus into an express.  We flashed past crowds of wet, bedraggled folks waiting for the Local buses.  Buses that once came by every ten minutes now ran on a thirty minute schedule and were always over crowded. 

But as I say, that was prior to 1995.  Maybe things have improved.(Wild, insane laughter). 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alice Dampman Humel

To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to mind are welcome. This is afree form discussion list.

Cc: Carl Jarvis

Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 10:21 PM

Subject: Re: [acb-chat] Insurance and such

Gigi wrote: 

"The grocery store closed because stores cannot survive on ACCESS only (PA's food stamps--it's a debit card system.)" 

This makes no sense at all. When someone uses the SNAP card, formerly known as food stamps, the store gets exactly the same amount of money as from someone using cash, debit or credit card. The prices paid for the food are exactly the same no matter what method of payment is used. 

about 

  

 

On Dec 14, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Gigi <cjm0806@comcast.net> wrote:

The grocery store closed because stores cannot survive on ACCESS only (PA's food stamps--it's a debit card system.)