[Buckeye McFrog]

Food deserts can be summed up in two words.

Shoplifting and SNAP.

Whenever the shrink numbers from shoplifting get too high, a low-margin grocery business can’t survive, and the store closes. Likewise when the vast majority of customers are using benefit programs like SNAP and AFDC the added administrative burdens eat-up the grocer’s margins, and the store closes.

You can’t drop below a certain percentage of full-retail cash customers and survive in the grocery business.

[FreedomPoster]

Why should economic reality intrude on this?

Do I really need to add the < /s> ?

[grania]

That’s real interesting. The grocery store I go to is nicely positioned to get that balance in customer base. Come to think of it, most of their stores that serve the inner city are.

[VanShuyten]

“Whenever the shrink numbers from shoplifting get too high, a low-margin grocery business can’t survive, and the store closes.”

When we moved to inside the Beltway on the Prince George’s side, we were amazed at how many of the locals would walk through the supermarkets grazing on the fruit, cookies and chips. You could find open bags of snacks on nearly every shelf.

It’s no wonder stores move out of those areas. About the only way to stop that is to use the Soviet model of stores, where the customer goes to the counter, hands a clerk a shopping list, pays, and then the clerk gets what’s on the list.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Likewise when the vast majority of customers are using benefit programs like SNAP and AFDC the added administrative burdens eat-up the grocer’s margins, and the store closes.

Actually with computers there is almost no administrative burden to taking EBT, WIC, SNAP or any other government program.

Now if your store is not computerized then you are up a creek.