Dallas residents fight neighborhood food deserts, push for supermarket solutions

DALLAS — Fifty years is a long time to fight. 

“I was one of the first Black teachers at South Oak Cliff High School,” said Lovie Hawkins, a resident of Oak Cliff.

She has been breaking barriers ever since. While she watches her South Oak Cliff neighborhood progress, she says she can’t help but notice what’s been left behind. 

“As the neighborhood started to transition into more Blacks, the various businesses started to move. Tom Thumb moved out of the area,” said Hawkins.

Mainstream grocery stores left her neighborhood, making it a food desert. 

“I’m just going say the color of our skin changed. That didn’t change the color of our money,” said Hawkins.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food deserts as areas with limited access to healthy and affordable food within a one-mile radius of urban communities. A Better Oak Cliff founder Frederick Terry said he’s seen the effects of food deserts since moving into his childhood home in Oak Cliff. 

“We’re literally talking about places that have nothing versus places that have…you know, I drive past five stores to get to the one that I really like,” said Terry.

Terry’s organization has been advocating for a mainstream supermarket in Oak Cliff to help bring healthy, accessible food to town. He said he goes door-to-door to businesses and speaks with residents to get others on board. 

“H-E-B owns property just right down the street from here and they’ve owned it for over seven years, and they’ve not done anything with it,” he said.

H-E-B owns the property at Beckley Avenue and Davis Street. They told WFAA they have no plans to share for the space at this time. As Terry spoke with others in the Bishop Arts neighborhood of Oak Cliff about the empty property, others asked about a store.

“If they have money to spend and they consume food just like everybody else, why do they deserve to not have mainstream supermarkets,” Dr. Edward Rincon of Rincon and Associates said. He researches Dallas food deserts.

Rincon’s 2020 study identified 91 food deserts in Dallas County. More than half were in the southern sector which is made up of majority Black and brown communities. 

“We’ve identified five food deserts that had upwards of $20 million that they earned in income and about $2 million or $3 million that they received in snap food benefits. And that’s plenty of money to spend,” Rincon said.

He said he also looked at robberies, assaults and drug crimes. 

“Crime was pretty spread out, so crime couldn’t have been the real reason,” Rincon said.

He said there’s a flaw in how grocery stores determine which communities spend more. 

“It basically makes them look like there’s no money being spent in their community but in actuality, they’re the ones that are spending it in other communities,” Rincon said.

It is what businesses call retail leakage. To keep money in her community, Hawkins drives about 15 minutes to Kroger in the Wynnewood Village neighborhood. It is a smaller Kroger store that’s been there for 50 years. John Votava runs Kroger’s Dallas Division and walked WFAA through its nearly $1 million renovations. 

“In June, when we did our grand reopening, we’ve seen sales go up at this location 13%,” said Votava, Kroger Corporate Affairs Director for the Dallas Division.

He said the price of building new grocery stores has increased. 

“It’s gone up about 50% since COVID,” Votava said. “We’ve just seen, you know, inflation, cost of materials, cost of labor.”

They opened a fulfillment center in South Dallas for delivery and food pickup partnering with local organizations to launch Grocery Connect. H-E-B opened a smaller version of its stores, Joe V’s, on West Wheatland Road.

“If we can’t have a real H-E-B, don’t give us a knockoff,” Hawkins said.

“Some of these companies are fully committed to doing the bare minimum,” said Terry.

The fight continues even up to the Dallas City Council. Tom Thumb has a store in North Oak Cliff, but in 2023, the city awarded Tom Thumb a $5.8 million tax incentive to build in Red Bird, which is in South Oak Cliff and borders Duncanville.

This past December, Tom Thumb backed out of the deal. They sent the following statement to WFAA:

“The evaluation process for any Albertsons Cos project has multiple stages including a standard re-evaluation immediately prior to the deadline for the release of contingencies, which we conducted for the RedBird project in September 2024. Despite the fact that the company determined that the Tom Thumb store in this location was no longer viable, the company gave extraordinary additional consideration for the project, including conducting further due diligence to consider every possible option before making the difficult decision.

 We are grateful to the Dallas City Council and the Economic Development team for their work on this project. Albertsons Cos remains committed to the DFW community, and while consumers now have access to nutritious food from another company less than a mile from the site of the planned Tom Thumb, we will also be offering no fee delivery to the zip codes in closest proximity to this location. We are also in active discussions with project stakeholders and community leaders on other ways we can support the community and development in this area.”

“I believe that Joe V’s scared them. I think another grocer came in and opened their door before they opened their door and they had opportunity and I think they got cold feet,” Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins said.

Atkins is also the city council’s economic development committee chair. He said to bring mainstream supermarkets, the southern sector needs more population density and improved infrastructure. 

“We’ve got to work with economic development and bring business in there and bring people who are going to work there, live there. That’s why we’re doing the parks, the trails,” Atkins said.

It is a process that takes time, which many said they don’t have. 

“It comes a time when you have to take things into your own hands and take care of your own,” Hawkins said.

That is where Friendship-West Baptist Church comes in. Hawkins joined their First Lady, Debra Peek Haynes in their community garden. “We’re just trying to bring awareness and also give access to let them know this is really, this is the foundation of good health,” said Peek Haynes.

“A lot of people don’t know that, but the leaves of the sweet potato, the plant when it’s fresh is a very good vegetable,” said Isaiah Mataruka, Friendship-West Garden Manager.

He showed WFAA the different produce being grown in the garden. He uses techniques from his home country, Zimbabwe.

“If we can’t have fresh produce that we can go to in the stores, let’s just grow our own,” Hawkins said.

While some have decided to grow their own food, others take the approach of advocating for more grocery options. 

“I know it’s going to take an investment of a private entity for a profit grocery chain to do this, but I don’t think this is a big ask,” Terry said.

“It’s time that we stand up and say no more,” Hawkins added.