Another seven grocery stores closed on Chicago’s South and West sides last month, leaving thousands of families wondering where they’ll buy fresh food next.
More closures are another reminder that access to something as basic as groceries remains fragile, depending on your ZIP code.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before.
In 2023, the city of Chicago approved roughly $26 million in incentives to help Yellow Banana renovate and reopen Save A Lot stores, including $13.5 million in taxpayer financing. Now seven of those stores are shuttered.
More than a decade ago, city and federal leaders invested roughly $20 million to bring a Whole Foods to Englewood, heralding it as proof that private investment could solve decades of food disinvestment. When that Whole Foods closed, the community was left right back where it started.
Governmental bodies keep writing the same checks and expecting a different ending.
Grocery stores are a business. And no private investor would put millions of dollars into a business only to receive no ownership stake, no collateral and no accountability — then simply hope everything works out. Yet, that’s effectively how politicians have approached grocery access for decades. Taxpayer dollars help finance private operators, but when those operators decide the business no longer works, they leave. The public loses its investment, neighborhoods lose their grocery store and residents once again pay the price.
There is a better way.
Instead of repeatedly subsidizing private companies without long-term protections, the city should establish a public grocery option.
That doesn’t mean replacing every private grocery store. It means recognizing that in neighborhoods where the market has repeatedly failed, grocery access should be treated like any other essential public service. We don’t rely solely on the private market to decide where libraries, parks, schools or fire stations belong. Access to healthy, affordable food deserves the same level of public commitment.
The good news is Chicago doesn’t have to start from scratch.
Economic Security Project’s work on this issue, particularly with the funding of a feasibility study, concluded that public grocery stores in Chicago are necessary, feasible and implementable. More importantly, that research from the nonprofit helped spark a national conversation.
Other cities are already acting on ideas that originated here.
Atlanta is preparing to open its second city-backed Azalea Fresh Market after the first served more than 150,000 customers while offering prices 18% to 22% below comparable grocery stores. New York City recently announced plans to open five publicly owned grocery stores by 2029, targeting neighborhoods with limited food access while aiming to offer staple items at discounts of up to 30%.
Meanwhile, Chicago — the city that helped prove the concept — is still watching another subsidized grocery chain walk away.
Public grocery stores don’t have to operate in isolation. Chicago has an extraordinary network of neighborhood food pantries, urban farms, food co-ops and nonprofit organizations already addressing food insecurity every day, so the city is already coordinating around a publicly owned market. A public grocery network could partner with those organizations, strengthen local supply chains, support local producers and create a more resilient food system, rather than forcing community organizations to scramble every time another private operator closes its doors.
Today, Chicago has seven vacant grocery stores that are already built out for food retail. The infrastructure exists. The research exists. The technical expertise exists. What’s missing is the willingness to stop repeating failed strategies.
Every grocery closure is treated like an isolated event requiring another emergency subsidy package to attract the next operator. But after years of watching stores open with public assistance only to close a few years later, it’s clear new solutions are needed.
Chicago has an opportunity to lead again. There is still time to rethink how the city combats food deserts by using these vacant locations to pilot a public grocery network. Instead of simply hoping another private chain succeeds where others have failed, the city can build an institution designed to serve neighborhoods for the long haul.
The question isn’t whether Chicago can afford to try something different.
After millions of public dollars have produced empty storefront after empty storefront, the better question is whether we can afford not to.
Erion Malasi is the Illinois director of policy and research at Economic Security Project and a national expert on public option grocery stores.