by Kat Hartman – Research Analyst at D3
& Louis Bach – Communications Team at D3
The D4 survey of food retailers with EBT and liquor licenses in Detroit revealed a "substantial percentage of stores with severe food violations..."
In the September 2011 edition of our newsletter, we debunked the myth that Detroit has no grocery stores within its city limits. That claim has been cited to support the assertion that Detroit is a food desert (an area in which healthy food is prohibitively expensive or outright unavailable.) We found that 115 grocery stores operate within the city limits. However, our analysis was limited to data that included only addresses, so we were unable to measure the current quality of food that stores offer, an important part of the food-accessibility issue.
On January 19th, the Detroit community came one step closer to addressing the question of food quality. This was accomplished through the development of a new data set, based on a survey of 207 food retailers in Detroit. The Good Food, Good Jobs Coalition of Doing Development Differently in Detroit (D-4) hosted a summit at COLORS and the offices of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) to highlight the release of its report on food safety in Detroit stores with both liquor and food stamp licenses.[1]
Data Driven Detroit (D3) provided technical assistance for the report by supplying analysis, maps, and data visualizations of the survey data collected by survey volunteers. D3’s Director, Kurt Metzger, was on hand Thursday to help present the study’s findings. The report revealed a two-tiered food retail environment:
Top-tier retailers make sufficient efforts to ensure the cleanliness and safety of their establishments, facilitating trust and positive relations with the community… low-tier retailers are characterized by unsafe, expired, or dangerous food products in an unsanitary environment, putting consumers and the public at risk.
The report found that 36% of stores had zero food violations and 27% of stores had zero sanitation violations, underlining the fact that it is possible to offer high quality meat and produce while running a successful store in Detroit. The low-tier stores, in comparison, featured a variety of violations: 7% of stores surveyed were responsible for 30% of the total food safety violations that were recorded. In addition, 38% of total stores sold expired food, the most common food-safety violation; 56% had dirty floors, the most common sanitation violation. In conclusion, the report found that “a minority of extreme low-tier establishments are having an outsize impact on the problem of food safety and sanitation in the city of Detroit.” (For more information, see the report.)
The Summit was attended by 250 members and leaders of the Detroit community, including US Congressman Hansen Clarke and State Representative Rashida Tlaib, and Detroit City Council Members Andrew Spivey and Brenda Jones. Representative Tlaib announced that she would introduce legislation allowing local and state governments to consider an establishment’s record of compliance with basic food safety and workplace standards when deciding whether to grant, renew, suspend, or revoke an establishment’s liquor licenses. Detroit City Council Members Andre Spivey, Ken Cockrel, and Brenda Jones are working with the Coalition to draft similar legislation for the City of Detroit.
As Detroit works to understand and solve its own problems, the development of new data sets will be essential. Primary data collection and analysis can be expensive and time consuming tasks, but the Good Food, Good Jobs report illustrates the importance and value of new data sets. Without the Coalition’s original research, the Detroit community would still have limited empirical basis to judge the severity of the local food-quality issue. Relying solely on personal testimony limits our efforts to understand and improve our situation. In order to move policy and government forward both personal narratives and data-driven research are necessary. As Detroit moves forward, D3 is committed to assisting community organizations ensure that their survey methodologies are statistically sound, and to provide them with sound data analysis and presentation services.
[1] It’s important to note that the study examined a different population than our article did in September. We counted the number of full-service grocery stores in Detroit. The Coalition’s research sampled all stores that both accept EBT and have a license to sell liquor, which captured some grocery stores and many corner stores. (It is estimated that only 8% of this universe is represented by full-service grocery stores.) This was a deliberate decision in their methodological design. Because liquor stores are ubiquitous in Detroit, many Detroiters are likely to do at least some of their grocery shopping there, especially if they have limited access to transportation. The two groups of stores have some overlap, but they are not identical.
Thanks for the follow-up and correction; all stores are NOT created equal, and too many in our city are mediocre or poor.
why are stores in detroit now allowed to sell so much expired food?