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A new digital tool could help bring more supermarkets to southern Dallas to combat food insecurity.
The tool helps identify low-income communities where supermarkets are needed. It was developed by local researcher Edward Rincón in collaboration with Chetan Tewawi, an associate professor at the University of North Texas.
“Unlike a traditional location-allocation study that identifies suitable locations for new facility placement, this study focuses on the development of a new metric for estimating spatial patterns of demand for food-at-home expenditures,” Rincón wrote in the study, “Demand Metrics for Supermarket Site Selection: A Case Study,” published in April in the journal Papers in Applied Geography.
Rincón is president of Rincón & Associates LLC, a Dallas-based market research firm.
The new metric and tool, called Urban Site Selection, is available free to Texas communities and those interested in investing in a supermarket in the state.
Rincón argues that large store chains are participating, consciously or unconsciously, in a type of redlining, in which certain areas with low incomes or high crime rates are discriminated against.
Urban Site Selection was recently used by Cornerstone Baptist Church to open and operate the Southpoint Community Market in South Dallas.
Chris Simmons, pastor of Cornerstone and co-founder of the Southpoint grocery store, said the evidence that a fresh food store was needed in that community was provided in part by the tool.
The tool “provided evidence not only about the potential demand for a local community grocery store in South Dallas but that, if operated according to best practices, it could be profitable,” Simmons said.
In the study, Rincón provides an economic profile for each ZIP code in Texas with total aggregate income and also includes total expenses for “food-at-home” and benefits obtained through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which can be used to buy food in supermarkets.
Gardens, food banks and more
Other tactics used in Dallas for combating food insecurity include community gardens, food banks and community refrigerators.
These creative efforts, according to Rincón, are important, as “supermarket brands will recognize that their highly selective site selection strategies also reinforce redlining practices — whether intentional or not — and cannot be justified with the available evidence. "
One coalition seeking to eradicate local food deserts is the Dallas Coalition for Hunger Solutions. Founded in 2012 through the Texas Hunger Initiative of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, the coalition seeks to empower people to gain equitable access to nutritious food, according to its website.
Wyonella Henderson-Greene, coordinator of the Dallas Coalition for Hunger Solutions, thinks the lack of investment in southern Dallas is not only from supermarkets but from companies in general that prefer to establish themselves in northern cities of the metro area.
“It is racism, systematic racism,“ Henderson-Greene said. “Either you want to invest in one-half of the city or you don’t want to.”
Henderson-Greene cited as an example of this lack of investment southern Oak Cliff, whose residents spend their earnings and SNAP benefits on food but are forced to do so in other parts of the city.
People are going to spend their money on food somewhere. “There are millions of dollars that leave Oak Cliff each month to shop in other parts of the city,” said Henderson-Greene. “Why wouldn’t people invest [in the area] if it weren’t for cultural bias, ethnic biases or some other kind of bias?”
Where to get food assistance
Several organizations seek to fight food deserts and reduce food insecurity in Dallas. You can check their websites and social media for events, including food collection and distribution.
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