Big Markets Gone; Southeast Food Costs Soar

Esther Jones frowned and shook her head as a rotten peach from her local grocery store cooler nearly disintegrated in her hands. Disgusted, she turned, stepped over a stray dog in the aisle and walked to the counter to pay for her small basket of groceries.

The clerk, all smiles, took her money and asked her to “hurry back.”

She scowled, because they both knew she would return.

She doesn’t really have much of a choice, though.

Esther Jones lives in Southeast San Diego, where about 100,000 residents are forced to shop at small, expensive and sometimes poorly stocked corner stores because the area has no major supermarkets. It’s the equivalent of doing the family shopping at 7-Eleven.

The lack of major food outlets has been a significant social problem facing Southeast residents since the late 1970s, when major supermarket chains started to abandon the area for more profitable locations.

Less than 10 years ago, there were five major supermarkets in the predominantly black and Latino area. But as high-income households left Southeast neighborhoods for the suburbs, so did the large supermarkets that depended on their purchasing power.

Hardest hit by the exodus are single mothers, the elderly and residents without cars who depend on corner markets because they cannot get to stores in areas such as National City or Lemon Grove.

“It’s a situation where some of the poorest people in the city pay the highest prices for bad food,” said Verna Quinn, vice president of the Southeast San Diego Development Committee, a community planning agency.

In response to the high prices and increasingly frequent reports of rotting produce and spoiled meat in neighborhood markets, Quinn and other residents in the late ‘70s formed the Committee for Clean Grocery Stores and went to the county Board of Supervisors to demand more frequent inspections of Southeast grocery stores.

In 1980, the board appointed a task force to investigate the sanitary conditions of Southeast markets and provide consumer information to Southeast residents. The county Department of Health Services, spurred by the task force, issued numerous citations to local stores. Meanwhile, the task force explained the inspection process to residents, so that they could detect and report health code violations.

But the results of these efforts were negligible at best. Some residents refused to report even the most obvious violations, fearful the health department would close their neighborhood market, Quinn said. She recalled a case where residents actually stepped forward to defend a store owner charged with health code violations, saying the store was the only food source they had.

Today, nearly five years later, the task force has dissolved, having had little impact on Southeast shopping conditions, which have worsened.

Southeast groups say they feel betrayed by city and county efforts to help them improve their shopping conditions.

“Don’t you know that’s how they solve a problem politically?” Quinn said. “They appoint a committee and let the problem go away by itself.”

Even the Committee for Clean Grocery Stores has slowly disbanded as frustrated members went on to combat other neighborhood issues such as crime, poor health care and education, said Fern James, a former committee member. With neighborhood cleanup efforts on hold, health department officials say complaints about area markets and convenience stores are on the rise. Sanitation inspectors said because of conditions there, they monitor Southeast markets more often than grocery stores in other areas. Health officers try to visit Southeast markets at least four times a year--twice the normal inspection rate--because of the frequent complaints.

Two years ago, the department compiled a list of 20 markets that generated an unusually high number of complaints. Some of the listed store owners, many of whom faced hefty fines and closure, have made improvements, but according to the county health director, Dr. Ronald Ramras, high prices and health issues are still problems in the area.

Among the problems, officials say, are:

- High prices predominate in small “mom and pop” markets in the area because they can’t buy in large volume and pass the savings on to the customer. Even the Otto Shopping Center Food Palace, the only supermarket-size grocery store in the Southeast community, can’t match the prices in major supermarkets because the one-store operation buys only for itself.

- Low standards of cleanliness not tolerated in other areas are the rule in Southeast’s small markets, which operate in deteriorating buildings and without the economic and social pressures taken for granted in other San Diego neighborhoods.

- Produce and products often sit in coolers and on shelves in Southeast’s small markets longer than in large grocery stores, because the small stores don’t generate high volume sales. The result is often lower quality produce and dusty shelves filled with items whose suggested purchase dates have expired.

In some cases, grocers either forget or simply don’t bother to take old products off the shelves, said community activist Jose Pacheco.

Pacheco has been monitoring Southeast grocers for six years and filing complaints when necessary with county health officers. During his monthly sweeps this year, Pacheco said, he has found spoiled meat, rotting produce and canned goods with 1982 purchase dates.

Ray Redmond, assistant director of the health department’s sanitation division, said he shares Pacheco’s frustration.

The health department’s sanitation division is understaffed, and department officials often depend on grocers’ voluntary compliance to keep their merchandise fresh, he said.

“There is only so much we can do,” Redmond said.

For instance, state law stipulates only that dairy products must be dated and does not require store owners to remove outdated products from their shelves.

“There is no law that says you can’t sell vermin-infested merchandise,” Redmond said.

He advises customers to check the quality date on their purchases.

“Could you imagine a person reading every single label on every purchase?” Pacheco said. “Just think of how long it would take to shop. This is what we have to put up with.”

But residents continue to put up with high prices and poor quality merchandise because they think they have no alternative, Quinn said.

“It really makes you sad when you compare these people’s situation with someone else’s across town who’s shopping at a well-stocked, bright and cheery supermarket,” Quinn said. “Some of these stores barely have lights.”

Health officials say educating both the public and the merchants might help to eliminate some of Southeast’s problems.

The small markets change ownership frequently, and sometimes health department inspectors have to remind new owners that the community doesn’t want wilted lettuce and rotten tomatoes, Redmond said.

Three years ago, the department offered a food storage and maintenance course for Southeast San Diego grocery store owners. According to Ramras, the course has never been repeated because of low demand.

Other organizations are trying to attack the problem through redevelopment.

San Diego City Councilman William Jones’ Project First Class is designed to breathe new life into the economically anemic community. According to Jones, Southeast residents spend 60 cents of every dollar outside the area, which lacks the service and retail outlets other neighborhoods enjoy.

“We have umpteen fast food restaurants, countless convenience stores, but only one bank and no major supermarkets,” said Jim Lantry, Jones’ assistant.

The Southeast San Diego Development Committee, and the city’s Southeast Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), hope to attract a major supermarket and other retail and service outlets to the Gateway East retail project at the intersection of California 94 and Interstate 15.

The proposed retail center, part of a combined development project, includes an industrial park and retail complex. So far, the Gateway West industrial park is at full occupancy. But developers are finding it more difficult to attract retail stores to the proposed retail complex across the street.

Grocery chains are reluctant to move back into the area because of the low purchasing power of Southeast residents and high operating costs due to pilferage and security needs.

Safeway Stores Inc., which once operated four stores in Southeast San Diego, now stays out of the area because, according to a company spokesman, “It’s absolutely impossible to run a profitable grocery store in the area.”

Larry Mabee, president of the Big Bear supermarket chain, agrees. His company serves Southeast residents at the Big Bear supermarket just north of Highway 94 on Federal Boulevard and Euclid Avenue.

Mabee said he can understand why other grocers avoid Southeast San Diego, but says his company plans to stay at its Federal Boulevard location despite losses. The Federal Boulevard Big Bear has been operating in the red for nearly a decade, he said. Why stay?

“Sometimes you have to make a moral commitment to the community you grew up in,” Mabee said, referring to the chain’s first store at 43rd Street and Boston Avenue in the Southeast community.

But many Southeast residents said they question Big Bear’s commitment. “They didn’t always keep the store up the way they should have,” James said.

In recent years the store has remodeled the exterior, added a new refrigeration system and initiated a community outreach program.

Mabee said the Federal Boulevard store improvements have helped attract new business, but he doubts the store will ever be profitable. The Southeast community can’t provide the sales volume a store needs to be successful, Mabee said.

But across Highway 94 in the Otto Shopping Center, Southeast residents are queuing up at the Food Palace in lines that sometime reach to the back of the store. The store, covered with jail-like bars to prevent shoppers from stealing grocery carts, is the only full-service grocery store that serves the more than 100,000 Southeast residents.

“You can come in here in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week and people will still be lined up,” Lantry said. “You can’t tell me there’s not a demand for a grocery store.”