“Teenage grocery store shelf stockers have taken to carrying tasers in their pockets in case they have to defend themselves from customers at the Sun Fresh Linwood at 31st Street and Prospect Avenue in East Kansas City.”
So reporte the Kansas City Star in September 2024. What makes the article interesting is that Star editors had championed the idea of a city-run grocery store. To their credit, they ate their crow in public, crow being about the only thing left to eat.
In KC’s municipal grocery shelf stockers took to carrying tasers
Much has been made about the possibility—since denied—that shoppers would have to prove their city residency to shop in New York City Mayor Mamdani’s five commie grocery stores. That angle was fun for a while, but it skirted the larger issue. Even before the racial spoils system set in, no urban government ran anything well anywhere, let alone an enterprise as complex and as corruptible as a super market.
The Kansas City experience is instructive. As in New York’s city proposed stores, the city set the rules and paid for the infrastructure, but a private company ran the day-to-day operation. This whole enchilada grew out of Michelle Obama’s failure to understand why inner-cities often become “food deserts.”
Kansas City leaders understood the problem no better. In 2014, the City bought the failing Linwood Shopping Center, a strip mall that included the store site. The site had sat vacant for the previous seven years, which should have told city leaders something but did not.
After four years of planning and payoffs, The Sun Fresh Market, managed by Lipari Bros, opened in June 2018. In November 2019, the Star ran a story on the new market headlined, “We’re Booming.” By this time, the City had spent $17 million on the project.
The “boom” was an illusion. The “fatigue” had already set in. In 2022, Community Builders of Kansas City (CBKC), a Black-owned development agency, took over the city lease from the weary Lipari Bros. “It’s a big deal,” CBKC CEO Emmet Pierson told the Star. “First of all, it’s a grocery store in an urban community. It’s in a food desert. But it’s a bigger deal because it’s owned by a minority led organization.”
An early sign that the experiment wasn’t exactly working
“It was an unusual move for the city to play such a hands-on role in development,” the Star reported. City leaders blundered in nonetheless, hoping “to ensure long-neglected residents of the East Side had access to fresh food.” CBKC quickly found why grocery chains avoided the East Side. It turns out that neighborhood brigands did not care whether white entrepreneurs ran the store or black NGOs.
“People use drugs and then they go straight to the grocery store and steal,” said Pierson. They also threatened staff. Two managers quit citing “hazardous working conditions.” The stock boys carried tasers for self protection. Due to theft and the price of security, the store hemorrhaged money. The store’s front door stayed broken for months, maybe years, because managers couldn’t afford to fix it, nor could they resolve the “rancid odor” that enveloped the store.
To add to the fun, the “unhoused” camped out in the front of the store. Prostitutes solicited Johns. Drug dealers sold their wares. Shoplifters evaded security by hopping on a bus that the City, still swimming in Covid cash, had made “free.” And to keep the brigand business booming, a woke DA released the perps even before they could eat their stolen Skittles.
“It’s an unfortunate misconception to believe that the Black community does not want the protection of policing,” State Senator Barbara Anne Washington told the Star. “We want to get that protection, and we want to get that service, and, by the way, we’re paying lots of money for that to happen.”
Mamdani can defund the police, but to put a grocery store in a “food desert” he may have to hire the foodie equivalent of the French Foreign Legion.
Crow isn't that bad to eat... if you marinate it for days, deep fry, spice enthusiastically, smother in gravy, and starve yourself for days/weeks prior...
There needs to be a consequence to the dumb ass politicians who promote these boondoggle s.
What if each of them were required to guarantee 25% of their salaries to the starting of the dream store?
If (when) the store loses $ then these contributed 25% salaries could maybe (probably not) make up the losses.
Of course if this were required the whole bs idea would be aborted- the sort of abortion every reasonable person could endorse.
If you don’t have your own money in the game, it’s not a game. It’s a scam.