I recently heard someone who had recently moved to Detroit say that when he first moved to the city a few years ago someone told him that there was only one grocery store in the city and it was located in “Midtown.” The reality is Detroit is home to nearly 70 stores, most of which are independently owned. Each store does the job of providing healthy food in a safe and respectful environment differently, and some stores face barriers to achieving this. Independent stores have the potential to adjust their products and services to meet the needs of the neighborhoods surrounding their store, and to respond to direct customer feedback to implement changes.
Last week DFPC and our partners in the Detroit Grocery Coalition launched the Detroit Great Grocer project. We formed the Detroit Grocery Coalition with organizations and agencies in the city that want to increase the availability of safe affordable healthy food in our grocery retail sector. the Detroit Great Grocer project does this by giving Detroit residents information about how each store performs based on our evaluation tools; supporting communities to build relationships with their local independent grocery stores; and assisting independent grocery stores that want to improve their capacity to offer a healthy food environment.
The Detroit Great Grocery Project includes the rating of each store on our Great Grocer rating system; a Community Engagement Fellowship where organizations will partner with local stores to improve store relationships with neighbors; and a Healthy Food Promotion Program that will increase the capacity of stores to stock and sell healthy food.
Find out how your local grocery store measures up – see the top 25 stores in the city and their ratings at
https://www.detroitfoodpc.org/committees/#dgc. We will share the ratings for all stores in the city later in the month.
Kibibi Blount-Dorn
DFPC Program Manager in Education and Engagement
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