For some people, it’s a quick easy trip to the grocery store when they need bread, milk, fruits, or vegetables. But for millions of Americans, particularly those in rural and non-White communities, that’s not reality.
A new tool—the Grocery Gap Atlas—provides advocates with data they can use to understand and challenge grocery corporate consolidation in their state, city, and even their neighborhood. When massive grocery store chains merge or buy smaller grocery store companies, they can use their growing market power to charge higher prices and offer fewer choices to consumers. They can also abuse their power to drive smaller grocery stores, especially those in rural and marginalized communities, out of business, creating food deserts where it is much harder for the community to afford all of the food options they deserve.
The Atlas not only includes grocery store locations but also details the parent or holding companies that own those stores. It brings together measures of food access and corporate concentration, along with socioeconomic disadvantage and residential segregation, to help people better understand how structural racism and unfair markets impact the availability of healthy foods.
This comprehensive data reporting platform empowers people to view reports on the corporate concentration of grocery markets, read case studies about the latest in market trends, and identify socioeconomic disadvantage and residential segregation trends. The tool aggregates multiple data sources across economic and health domains and visualizes information on an interactive map to help stakeholders better understand the grocery landscape in their communities.
One case study, for example, compares grocery chain market dominance across states from 2000 to 2023, highlighting that on average, a small number of corporations have captured more than half of the market share in food retail. Research shows that the closer a market is to a monopoly, the higher the market’s concentration and the lower its competition, resulting in overall poor food access. Rural, Hispanic, and African American communities were more likely to face these circumstances.
The Atlas also offers an interactive map that allows users to search by state, county, and census tract to determine not only food access, but also the median household income, poverty rate, and percentage of SNAP participants.
The Grocery Gap Atlas is a collaboration between RAFI and the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. It was created for those working to break down barriers that are driving inequities and improve food access for people in every community. The wide-ranging data allows site visitors to better understand relationships and factors driving inequity and utilize the findings to move the needle on systemic issues plaguing under resourced areas.
