Jaszmen Ray Johnson lives within a convenient five-minute walk of the Indy Fresh Market, a new 15,000-square-foot Black-run grocery store aimed at addressing the food desert on the eastside of Indianapolis.
“I love to see Black people flourish. Their hot food is delicious,” Johnson said.
But despite the proximity, many nearby residents like Johnson don’t shop there often.
“It's just a little expensive. I don't want to spend eight, nine, $10 on just a pound of ground meat,” she said.
Some products like eggs, bread and canned beans were similar or slightly cheaper than competitors. Sometimes the store’s ground beef is on sale for $1.79 a pound, but the standard price is around $9.69. The same product regularly sells for $5.79 at the nearest Kroger. The same goes for other essential products including milk, cabbage and canned tomatoes.
This has put the residents of the Sheridan Heights neighborhood in front of a choice between convenience and price.
Indy Fresh Market managers say they want to offer competitive prices, but there are factors beyond their control that are all too familiar to small independent grocery stores across the country. Many of these factors are driven by big box grocery store dominance in some markets.
It’s partly why what could have become the largest grocery store merger ever – between Kroger and Albertson – just crumbled. A federal judge blocked it on Wednesday (Dec. 11) citing concerns that it would limit competition and harm consumers.
The middlemen favor the big stores
The eastside of Indianapolis has seen at least five independent grocers open and close in less than a decade.
Independent stores don’t have the same buying power with manufacturers as big box retailers like Kroger and Walmart. They struggle to negotiate lower prices with brokers, who charge a certain percentage to work as middlemen between grocery stores and manufacturers. Brokers also prioritize big box retailers and offer them lower prices.
That means that smaller stores may go without certain items or may need to raise the prices to afford to pay the broker and break even, let alone make a profit.
For healthy, perishable foods like fruits and vegetables that could be detrimental, said Grady McGee, senior director of contract manufacturing for Goodwill, who also oversees the Indy Fresh Market.
“One of the concerns is some of our produce not being able to sell and making sure that we are priced appropriately so we can sell those items…before it goes bad,” said McGee.
The store has tried to cut costs through different avenues, such as working with local farmers and producers to stock some items at a fraction of the price. Back in June, they slashed prices by an average of 25% across the store and McGee said customers were appreciative.
“It may equate to a couple of cents, but in the grocery business, it was pretty substantial,” McGee said. “A lot of our customers [were] noticing that.”
McGee hopes these changes will allow some of the fresh items to remain competitive with big box stores. He aims to improve the store’s finances by roughly 50%.
And nutrition advocates are rooting for the store’s success.
Indy Fresh Market is funded through a nearly $2.5 million investment from Cook Medical, a local medical device company, as an attempt to address food deserts. Long time residents Michael McFarland and Marckus Williams were the managers of the store and planned to own it in the future under a rent-to-own model. It was supposed to serve as a blueprint that could be replicated in other areas. The goal was to infuse a low income area with food, boost its economy and prop up a Black-owned business.
But just a year after it opened its doors, there have been signs the store is struggling.
Some of the struggles facing Indy Fresh Market are not unique. Nearly 7% of independent grocery retailers across the country closed each year from 1990 to 2015, according to recent research.
In contrast, Indiana has 43 Meijer stores and over 124 different Walmart retailers.
Some nutrition advocates say creating a fair market for small grocers is an important step to address food deserts.
‘We never, ever made a profit on milk’
In May 2022, about 47% of Indianapolis' population lived in a food desert, which is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income area where at least a third of the residents live within more than a mile from a full size grocery store in urban areas, or 10 miles in rural areas.
Researchers estimate 75% of Marion County community members also experience food insecurity — the inability to access healthy foods due to income.
Food deserts, also known as supermarket redlining, have been carved out when White affluent populations flee to suburbs. Without the influx of wealth, large supermarkets have less incentive to continue business in those areas. They typically close up shop, leaving behind vacant buildings and limited access to resources.
Communities have tried to address this in many ways by building independent grocery stores that are closer to lower income neighborhoods, planting community gardens, distributing federal funds for food assistance and implementing laws that promote healthy shopping.
But many barriers persist.
Community members like Robert Easly understand some of the issues at hand. Easly wants to support the local, Black-operated grocery store, but without more regular price drops, the Indy Fresh Market just isn’t affordable for him.
“Some things they'll drop when they’re trying to get rid of it,” Easly said. “But you pay $4 for milk and $3 for a loaf of bread. I mean, you're not gonna sell too many loaves.”
A gallon of 2% milk at the east side grocer cost $5.29, compared to Kroger which is $3.19. Bananas at The Indy Fresh Market are $0.79 and Kroger is $0.55.
It’s one of the reasons another independent grocery store, Pogue's Run Grocer, struggled to remain open.
Pogue's Run Grocer opened in 2010 at the intersection of 10th St. and Rural St., on the near eastside of Indianapolis, and closed after eight years. Mary Bowling, the bookkeeper for the 5,000-square-foot co-op grocery store, said they didn’t take in as much money as they spent.
“It just took ages to even find somebody who would sell us milk,” Bowling said, “and I think we never, ever made a profit on milk, just because the quantities we would buy it in would not be enough that we could sell it at a profit without people raising eyebrows at how much it costs.”
That’s why building grocery stores in order to combat food deserts might not be the most efficient solution, some experts say.
“If nutrition-minded or public health-minded organizations were looking to make a difference, it really depends what their intentions are,” said Adie Tomer, an expert in infrastructure policy and urban economics at the Brookings Metro.
“If it's purely to make food more affordable — which is the most pressing challenge around food and public health in America — then trying to improve SNAP benefits or adopting new local programming to improve income-based food insecurity would likely be most effective.”
‘Leave it to the free market and the market does what it does best’
State and federal governments have tried to step in to establish grocery stores and other nutrition initiatives in food deserts. But the programs have had limited success.
The Food Trust is a nonprofit that has worked to combat food deserts across the country. They work with states to fund organizations that want to put grocery stores in food deserts or plant community gardens. According to the nonprofit’s portal, only half of the Midwest has state or federal tax incentives for grocery stores.
In Indiana, the Englewood Community Development Corp. received a $750,000 federal Healthy Food Financing grant in 2016. It allowed them to create a hydroponic community garden that still operates and serves the Childcare and Infant Learning Center on the near eastside. But the state has been unable to secure similar federal or state funding.
Indiana lawmakers have authored bills to provide similar funding sources, but many of those legislative efforts have failed.
In 2015, House Bill 1248 aimed to promote urban farming in cities. The following year, House Bill 1077 aimed to provide underserved communities with finance loans and grants for affordable and healthy food options. Then in 2017, Senate Bill 277 would have provided new and existing businesses with loans and grants for fresh or unprocessed foods.
Unai Miguel Andres, a data analyst at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, said these efforts often fail because they haven’t been a priority in Republican-led areas.
“This will be a policy that would mainly influence Democrat-[leaning] cities. So, in a Republican majority House and Senate, that's not something that benefits them,” Andres said.
As the 2025 legislative session nears, Andres doesn’t think Indiana lawmakers will be able to move the needle until they explain how healthy food laws could also benefit rural environments.
That’s why nutrition advocates say state-level changes must be accompanied by drastic federal regulations that can bust the national supermarket monopoly.
“We leave it to the free market and the market does what it does best,” Andres said. “Which puts these stores in affluent or well-traveled areas where they can make the most money.”