On Monday, November 17, 2003, at 09:55 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I grew up in the projects on the dole without any spare income or car. My mother used to take the bus downtown to the Great Northern Market and lug two bags back to southeast and then walk two and a half blocks home. This was obviously not a perfect shopping situation especially in winter. The Hood Stores of yesteryear were not so criminally inclined but they were tiny and understocked and expensive. Not a viable situation either.
Those old family owned corner groceries performed a real service and were not that much more expensive than the "supermarkets" that started popping up in the 1920s.
Then Delmonicos, a tiny Italian store over Nordeast decided they would offer free call-in shopping services and free delivery. They almost instantaneously had 176 new families as customers. If youi've ever been in the place that's a little hard to believe as it doesn't look much bigger than your average corner store; but there's large storage in back and with only a couple of employees shopping at any one time, no need for display cases or fancy coolers. Matter of fact half the stuff you get even when there in person has to come from "the back". I seem to remember they would have designated delivery days in our neighborhood but that was a hell of a lot less inconvenient than any other option.
It is sad to see Delmonico's closing, but their market has moved on.
Personally I'm a lousy businessman but I don't see why this can't work again. You trade the huge expense of massive square footage and blocks of coolers and racks for the expense of order pickers and delivery people. Also keep a little store front operation going for convenience. There are few places with the concentrated housing of the Project any more so you would probably have to consider opening such stores in many neighborhoods to cut down on the expense of delivery.
The only way you could do it is with massive automation and delivery density like UPS or the Postal Service has. Think in terms of robot order pickers that worm their way through 40 foot tall shelves of food in warehouses measured in hectares. Even then, it wouldn't be cheap- weigh your groceries and figure out what it would have cost to ship them overnight some time. To give you some idea of the cost structure of residential delivery, consider that the Postal Service offers "Special Delivery" for anything from a post card to a truck load of mail for a bit under $10. They don't publicize it though, probably because their losing money on it. Even with "residential delivery surcharge" UPS is losing money unless they have a bunch of deliveries within a block or building. So figure on over $10 for a delivery charge for your groceries.
As for WIC and welfare fraud, prostitution, fencing, drug dealing etc..... well, it takes two to tango there. If there were easy legitimate shopping options for the mass of legitimate shoppers then the "Hood Stores" would be reduced to little criminal crannies and pretty easily focused upon and busted.
I live equidistant from a "Hood Store" and a Holiday Station. I never shop at the hood store but quite frequently patronize Holiday. Many of my gangbanger neighbors do the opposite- apparently the "Hood Store" is offering some things the Holiday isn't. Another 2 blocks walk would take my gangbanger neighbors to Houston's Super Valu, another legit retailer. None the less, despite the availability of more reasonably priced and better quality food, the gangbangers still patronize the Hood Store.
The Hood Stores exist as fronts for crime, "employment" for folks who can't get Green Cards, and a scam to rip off WIC. There is no reason why we should continue to tolerate their existence in our city.
hanging on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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