In a shopping center known as the Northwest Junction sits a KFC, a wings restaurant, Rose’s, a discount shopping store, and a medical cannabis dispensary. What’s noticeably missing? A grocery store.
The Junction used to be home to Food Depot, but in 2023, the store shuttered its doors, leaving this part of Northwest Jackson in a food swamp – that is, an area that’s lacking fresh produce and vegetables but has a plethora of fast food restaurants and gas station dives.
When Senator John Horhn campaigned outside of Food Depot during his third mayoral bid in 2017, he touted it as one of his achievements for the city. Horhn, a candidate in the upcoming mayoral race, had a major hand in getting the Food Depot on Northside Drive as well as a McDade’s in Westland Plaza.
“Back in 2005, Jackson experienced the closure of 13 Winn-Dixies, and overnight, [it] created a bunch of food deserts in our city,” said Horhn. “Working with a colleague, I was able to recruit two grocery stores back into areas that were deserts.”
But Food Depot on Northside fell victim to theft and problems with security, Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes told WAPT in 2023. In May of that year, the grocery store closed.
”Folks are very disappointed because in that part of the city of Northwest Jackson, there is a lack of opportunity for fresh fruits and vegetables and food that’s healthy for you,” Horhn told Mississippi Today. “People want the convenience of having food that they can purchase and consume nearby to where they live.”
Now, as he embarks on his fourth mayoral campaign, he said it’s important to get grocery stores back into communities around Jackson. He points to programs such as Hope Enterprise Corporation’s Mid South Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which offers financing for grocery stores in food deserts, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture as potential partners in bringing fresh food to families.
“We’ve been able to attract grocery stores in the past. I think we can do it again,” he said. “I believe that there are incentives that are available. I think that we need to be aggressive about our attempts to get those resources so that we can subsidize it.”
But not all grocery stores are alike. Even when there are grocery stores within walking distance, residents find themselves heading to other neighborhoods to find better quality goods.
Sheila O’Flaherty lives in the Jayne Avenue neighborhood in West Jackson, about a mile away from the Grocery Depot. She prefers to go to Kroger on Interstate 55 or the Save-A-Lot by the Jackson Medical Mall. Like one-in-five households in her area, O’Flaherty doesn’t own a car. To buy groceries, she’ll have to take a total of four buses per trip, turning what should be a quick trip to the store into an hours-long trek on public transportation.
“I don’t think the groceries that we have access to here in Westland Plaza, specifically here in the neighborhood, are of the quality that you get in other places,” said O’Flaherty. “The produce is better at Save-A-Lot, and everything’s much better at Kroger.”
She said she wishes that there were more options for her that wouldn’t require her to travel the nearly 8 miles to Kroger.
“I would love to have a grocery store here that I can walk to. I get what I can there, but there’s not much there. We just need better quality groceries in all sections of Jackson,” she said.
Jesse Huffman agrees. He’s lived in West Jackson for more than 20 years.
“Kroger has bad food, too. Don’t get me wrong. But I could buy a banana and it may last five days,” compared to the nearby Grocery Depot, Huffman said, where “it’ll last a day.”
Huffman frequently travels to neighboring Clinton to Kroger to buy groceries, which he said adds to his expenses in buying fuel for his car.
“I’m not frustrated by staying in a community without a grocery store, but I would love to have one. If you don’t have a ride – I have a way to get there, but it costs me more gas to go to Clinton than to go right here.”
In an emailed statement, Joel Edwards, Chief Operating Officer for The Roberts Company, which owns Grocery Depot and other grocery stores in Jackson, said the store is “deeply committed to providing a full-service supermarket that is safe, clean, and stocked with fresh meat and produce—particularly in an area of Jackson that has limited access to such resources.
“We take customer feedback very seriously and strive to address any concerns with urgency.”
Edwards also said they’re upgrading the dairy and frozen food cases.
“This investment reflects our ongoing commitment to providing a high-quality shopping experience for the community, both now and in the years to come,” Edwards said via email.
Food Depot on Northside Drive isn’t the only grocery store that’s closed in Jackson in recent years. Jackson Cash and Carry, another grocery store that Horhn championed for the city, closed in 2020. Now, Grocery Depot on Fortification Street, owned by The Roberts Company, is set to close, though no closure date has been set.
With 13 grocery stores, Jackson is home to about one grocery store for every 11,000 of its residents, compared to nearby Clinton, which has one store for every 8,900 residents, or Bryam with one store per 4,200 people.
Food insecurity, or the lack of access to enough healthy food options to meet a family’s needs, impacts nearly one in five people in Hinds county, where Jackson is located.
There are multiple factors that determine whether a community is food insecure, such as location of the nearest grocery store, access to transportation and food availability. It’s measured via a survey of families to determine their difficulty in finding food, such as if they couldn’t afford to buy more meals, or if they were worried about food running out and had to skip meals.
One in four children find themselves without access to food, especially during the summer when they don’t have school lunches to rely on. Organizations are working to keep children fed during the summer, with one offering families supplemental income to buy groceries.
Mississippi declined to opt into the SUN bucks, or Summer EBT, program for the second year in a row, which would have provided families who qualify an extra $120 per child during the summer. A refusal to expand SUN bucks will leave an estimated 324,000 children across Mississippi without many options.
Dr. Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. authored ‘Getting Something to Eat in Jackson,’ a book which examines how race and class factors into the Black food experience. He said that while food justice work is important, it’s key to present people with solutions that deal with poverty, not just food insecurity.
“Sometimes when we think about helping folks, we’re trying to teach them how to cook. We’re trying to teach them how to shop properly at the grocery store. All of that is kind of misplaced energy,” said Ewoodzie. “What we need to be doing is trying to help them secure housing or trying to help them secure employment, and once we help them secure those things, they will have a larger bandwidth to consider food and how food matters in their lives.”
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