Groceries in Downtown Kitchener
Besides the perception that downtown Kitchener is unsafe, one of the most frequent complaints I encounter is that downtown Kitchener does not have a grocery store. In addition to getting into (sometimes heated) discussions about the topic in person, from time to time the newspaper prints articles and op-eds about the subject.
I may be the only person in Kitchener-Waterloo who feels that downtown is doing just fine without a Sobeys or Zehrs or Valu Mart or FreshCo downtown. I feel that there are lots of adequate food options here, and that the lack of a grocery store has encouraged a diversity of food options to fill the niche. But instead of keeping my mouth shut and my opinions to myself, here comes another judgemental, poorly-researched and possibly incorrect article sure to alienate any reader who lives in Kitchener-Waterloo and bore anybody else (assuming anybody outside KW actually reads this blog -- Facebook does not appear to display the entries to people on my friendslist unless I am making banal declarations about my sexuality, and nobody believes in RSS feeds any more.)
In addition to alienating my audience, I have two theses in this entry: firstly, that Kitchener has adequate food options, and secondly that introducing a traditional grocery store to the core could well do more harm than good. My hidden agenda is to illustrate some of the food resources downtown, so that if you are one of those people who feels there are no options downtown you can go exploring.
The Kitchener Farmers Market
My first argument against the necessity of a traditional grocery store in Kitchener is the Kitchener Farmers Market. The market is healthy; there are lots of farmers, lots of vendors, and the place bustles with customers. The market is much better than a grocery store in many ways:
Brainless hippies like me can get their food from local farmers. It used to be difficult to distinguish actual farmers at the market from vendors who dress up like Mennonites and get their supplies from the Toronto food terminal; the market now provides actual farmers with placards that display their names, pictures, and bios. I believe (but do not know) that farmers make a better profit at farmers markets than by selling their food through the mainstream food system, so giving money to farmers directly makes me feel good. I cannot do this at a traditional grocery store.
Food vendors provide lots of imported fruits and vegetables for people who are not brainless hippies. If you want bananas or pineapples or out-of-season strawberries, you can get them readily. Furthermore, this is the same food you would get at the grocery store, in the sense that these vendors get their produce from the Toronto food terminal.
There are many options to get cheaper in-season produce, as well as seconds. I cannot purchase imperfect pears or broken carrots at a regular grocery store for any price; I can get them at the farmer's market for a reduced rate. (Maybe this helps reduce food waste in the system? It is hard to tell.) Another advantage for shoppers who are on limited budgets is the fact that many vendors reduce their prices towards the end of the day.
You can also find foods at the market that I have never seen sold at grocery stores, such as ground cherries, garlic scapes and giant mushrooms. These foods tend to be fragile and seasonal.
One of the best things about the market is that it sells real food. In contrast to grocery stores who make their livings selling highly-processed, highly-packaged, reduced-nutrition food, the farmers market sells less processed food: fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese, and baked goods. You certainly can find unhealthy food at the Market (and I certainly do, thanks to the bakeries and their delicious pastries) but the majority of my purchases consist of food that Michael Pollan would probably approve of.
The farmers market attracts some people from outside the Kitchener downtown, in addition to serving the needs of locals.
The main criticism of the farmer's market is that it is only open on Saturdays, which means it is inconvenient. Usually, this gripe is expressed as "some people can't get to the market on Saturdays". I have some sympathy for this argument, but not much.
First of all, the market is open from 7am to 2pm, which offers a reasonable (although not perfect) window of time for people doing shift work.
Secondly, I myself have trouble getting to the market before it closes, but I organize my Saturdays to get there anyways, because I know it is only open one day a week. I am willing to put in extra effort to get to the market, and I think others are as well.
Thirdly, the inconvenient hours mean that actual farmers can attend; a market that is open four days a week will be staffed by vendors.
Fourthly, the inconvenience has an excellent side effect: several people you know will probably be at the market too, which means you get to socialize in addition to purchasing groceries.
Fifthly, there is no food option that will work for everybody. You won't find me at a Sobeys too frequently; the food there is too expensive, and there is too much junk food around to drain my wallet.
For all of its faults (and it does have faults -- notably the white-elephant building) the farmers market is one of the best things about downtown Kitchener, and I oppose any developments that threaten its vibrancy.
New City and "Ethnic" Foods
My second argument against bringing a grocery store to downtown Kitchener is that it already has a grocery store: New City Supermarket, aka "the Chinese grocery". New City is a thriving mid-sized grocery store that is doing very well for itself -- it has expanded once already, and I think it is in the process of expanding into a housewares business too. I am fairly sure that New City is committed to staying downtown; I think that it made a break for some plaza on Krug Street once, but then the Krug street people moved back or the a splinter group opened a downtown location or something.
Kitchener City Council stubbornly clings to a vision of suburbanites flocking to downtown businesses; New City is one example of that vision in action. Kitchener-Waterloo does not have that many Chinese grocery stores, so people from elsewhere in town flock to the store to do their shopping. That would not happen with a traditional (read: "non-ethnic") grocery store, because a traditional grocery would have no comparative advantage to the many grocery stores outside the downtown.
As for the food: you can find some good stuff there, and not everything is imported from China. Many fruits and vegetables are grown on this continent (albeit in Texas and California), and a lot of the breads and soy products come from the Greater Toronto Area. It is true that the majority of food in the store is imported from overseas, and also true that for all my brainless hippie ways I do purchase a few imported goods: soy sauce and noodles and a few other things.
One of the big selling points at New City is the seafood. The baskets of live crabs and tanks of fish on Death Row make me feel sad and squeamish, but there is no question that the fresh fish is popular.
The store is open every day, and provides a wide-enough range of food that one could use it as a primary grocery store. I think lots of people do; when I am there I always see some non-Chinese patrons getting their groceries.
I do worry that the City of Kitchener will end up cracking down on New City. I think the most likely culprit is parking; on Saturday mornings you can see a long line of cars idling down Scott Street. (Nobody is willing to use the parking garage half a block away, it seems.) But this is one of the costs of having a store that draws business from the suburbs; people in the suburbs drive. There is lots of parking in downtown Kitchener (how many parking garages do we need?) but little of it is free parking, and I cynically believe that suburbanites are unaquainted both with the customs of paying for parking, and of walking.
New City is not the only ethnic food store in the downtown area, although it is definitely the largest. Different ethnic stores wink in and out of existence all the time. There is an African grocery, a Latin store across from the bus station that somehow stays in business, a Portuguese bakery, and a couple of other East Asian stores. There is also the Hasty Market across from the bus terminal, which has somehow morphed from a convenience store to a pretty good source for middle Eastern foods. I do not shop at all of these stores (and I suspect some of them have closed since I last checked) I am glad that they exist. At least a few of them are filling niches in the community. Maybe a few of them will grow in success the way New City Supermarket has, and expand their sizes to cope with demand.
Processed Foods and Dry Goods
The most common complaint about New City Supermarket is that it is too ethnic. Fortunately, if you are looking to pick up milk, bread, eggs, or processed foods you have several options:
Full Circle Foods serves your needs if you like spending a lot of money for organics and other politically-correct foods. I shop there regularly for the cheap bulk items: spices, flour, porridge, cornmeal, and squares of bakers chocolate.
The Bargain Shop is a reasonable source of non-perishable goods: canned food, pasta, cookies, and candies. In response to consumer demand, they also have bread, cheese and milk -- the stuff that happens to be more difficult to find at New City, incidentally.
Somewhat inexplicably, when the Shoppers Drug Mart near City Hall opened it featured a food section, which serves as a (somewhat expensive with limited selection) grocery store, with lots of frozen and processed foods, as well as staples like dairy and eggs. I do not think that those advocating for a grocery store in downtown Kitchener can hope to do better than this, but the existence of the Shoppers Drug Mart food section does not please the critics.
Between Full Circle and the Bargain Shop, I am able to satisfy most of my dry good and processed food needs/cravings. In addition I also purchase dollar bags of hard candy at the Family Dollar store near the Walper.
Accessible Grocery Stores
Fine, you say. I'm a brainless hippie. I am single. I have a limited palate. Maybe I can satisfy my food needs downtown. How about regular people who want one-stop shopping at a real grocery store, as opposed to some ethnic grocery where the labels are not even in English?
Good news, I say. If you really want to shop at a "real" grocery store, there are lots of options, all of which are easily accessible on King Street, the best-serviced public transit corridor in the region:
Central Fresh Market is nearby (about half an hour walk from downtown, or an easy bus ride), is independently owned and operated, has good prices on certain items and reasonable prices on the rest, occasionally features in-season produce, and is a "real" grocery store. I like it, and I hope that it is not snuffed out as a sacrifice to the LRT.
The high-end grocery store Vincenzo's (which for some reason doesn't count as ethnic) relocated to the Bauer lofts. The store is outside of my price range, but apparently it is popular with foodies in the region.
And then there is Valu Mart at Waterloo Town Square, which has okay selection and okay prices on some things (and amazing prices on 2kg bags of brown rice, which I still purchase there). The Valu Mart is accessible by both iXpress and the mainline route 7, so even though it is far away it is readily accessible by bus.
There is also a Valu Mart down at Frederick Street Mall, which is less accessible by transit.
All of these locations (except Vincenzo's?) have two things that are unreasonable to expect in downtown Kitchener: floor space and free parking.
The Costs of a Downtown Grocery Store
Given all the options above, I believe there are lots of food options in downtown Kitchener, and that we are doing just fine without a conventional grocery store there. But that is not going to silence the critics, so let us explore the option: how can we get a grocery store downtown, and what will it cost?
It is true that grocery stores can exist in downtown areas. I recently had the privilege of attending a conference in downtown Toronto, and there was a Loblaws embedded on the second floor of a building. The grocery store was a reasonable size (probably bigger than New City Supermarket, but smaller than Central Fresh) and there were shoppers present. The food was also expensive, which might have been Loblaws pricing, Toronto pricing, or the costs of having a grocery store downtown.
I could believe that downtown Toronto has the density to support a grocery store and additional shops. I do not think the same is true of downtown Kitchener. I believe that a successful downtown grocery store will reduce business to other stores for the same reason tourists to foreign countries eat at McDonald's: it is familiar and predictable. That means the Farmers Market gets weaker (because who wants to wake up on Saturday morning to get groceries?) and that New City loses business (because who wants to shop at an ethnic grocery with such narrow aisles and weird foods?) and that the small ethnic groceries wink out of existence (because I suspect many of them are barely holding on as it is). I could be wrong about this -- maybe a downtown grocery will just lure away residents who currently shop at big box stores -- but I doubt it.
Of these consequences, I worry about the Kitchener Farmers Market the most, because the kinds of local foods I purchase at the market carry a hefty premium at grocery stores (and probably earn the farmers less money). If you don't believe this, consider the anaemic market held Thursdays at Waterloo Town Square. Except for CSA members, few people use this market as a shopping destination -- why would you, when there is a grocery store right next to it? As a result few farmers attend the market, and the overall result is disappointing. It is true that the Waterloo Town Square market is relatively new, but as far as I can tell the market is losing momentum, not gaining it.
It would be different if I thought people were actively suffering for lack of a conventional grocery store downtown. I think people are still able to get affordable, quality food at a small inconvenience. The benefits you get with a grocery store are small, and the costs are great.
In addition to its effect on the downtown food ecosystem, consider the constraints a downtown grocery store would face. Such a store would necessarily be small (because as far as I know there are no grocery-store sized buildings available downtown) and parking would have to be expensive or subsidized. That means food selection will be smaller than at other grocery stores, and food will be more expensive. Maybe that will be okay for local residents, but anybody who has other grocery store options will opt for those instead. Worse, the critics will STILL complain that the grocery store downtown is not good enough (which is why they do not accept the Shoppers Drug Mart or New City Supermarket as adequate).
My biggest worry is that there will be enough of a stink raised around the issue that the City of Kitchener will step in, subsidizing a chain grocery store (and its parking). That would be the worst outcome I could think of. We already have private businesses doing good business downtown, and the City would distort the market and hurt those businesses for little public benefit. If a private grocery store came downtown and set up shop without subsidies, then I would not be happy but I would write off the competition as one of the costs of capitalism. (I guess the lamented David's Gourmet tried this, and it flopped.) If the City came into the picture and poured tax dollars into such a venture, I would be furious.
When people cry for a grocery store downtown, I think they are crying out for something familiar and convenient. People want one-stop shopping, not grocery trips that involve several stores and walking. People want the foods they want all year around, regardless of the consequences on local farmers. If you really want these things then you can have them, but there will always be a cost. The suburbs are ill-suited for walkability and a diversity of shops, and downtowns are ill-suited for one-stop shopping at box stores.
If you somehow read this far and still want a grocery store downtown, so be it. All I ask is that you appreciate the grocery options that already exist here, and that you take advantage of them and see just how many of your groceries you can get here. Doing this will serve two purposes: it will help keep you fed, and it will tantalize grocery chains into setting up shop, because they will see that there are people willing to spend money on groceries downtown.