Kroger closed five Pick 'n Save locations in Milwaukee County this summer. One of them was in Metcalfe Park, a predominantly Black neighborhood.
It leaves Metcalfe Park with even more limited fresh food options. More than 40% of residents in the neighborhood live in poverty, and more than 1 in 4 don’t have access to a car.
The Pick 'n Save grocery store in Metcalfe Park gave residents convenient access to fresh food for more than 20 years.
When Kroger announced plans to close it, residents protested.
"When we talk about consistent divestment from our communities we're seeing it in real time, right. This store is leaving. Walgreens is leaving. Clinics are leaving. Everything is leaving. One of the things that we can do is make sure they don't leave quietly," says Melody McCurtis, the deputy director of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges.
McCurtis thinks the closure is a byproduct of food apartheid. This term, coined by food justice advocate Karen Washington, suggests that a lack of access to healthy food is engineered based on race, class and geography, and disproportionately affects people of color.
Metcalfe Park residents now have to leave their community to get to a grocery store.
That’s not going to be easy for some of the elderly, for example, who don’t have transportation. To try to solve this problem, several Black women residents and neighbors of the Wesley Scott Senior Apartments, decided to test out a carpool.
On the inaugural trip, the group headed to Aldi in Miller Park Way. It’s about a 15-minute drive.
Before heading out, Patricia Gransberry, Latisha Bully-White and Michelle Dugger, shared their thoughts on the Pick 'n Save closure.
"We can’t walk to no stores, get no fresh food and vegetables. It’s very, very inconvenient," Gransberry says.
"Right!" adds Bully-White. "It is because I live on 39th and Meinecke, Pick ’n Save was right there on 36th and Meinecke. Can't even send my kids to run and get some bread or eggs or none of that. We really ain't even got no corner stores in the area."
Gransberry jumped in to add that Michelle has to have her groceries delivered due to the closure.
"And I miss that chicken," Michelle Dugger laughed.
Gransberry goes on to say that many of the seniors in the Wesley Scott building walked to Pick 'n Save with their carts. "Can't walk to no store now," she says. "It's too far.
That's why the group opted to carpool.
"This the first time we trying to see how it go with our community on helping each other," says Bully-White.
"Gas is not cheap so we gotta pile up, sit on laps maybe and go get some groceries together," Gransberry says.
So, off to Aldi we went. I rode with Valerie Tobias.
"Every other day I would go to Pick ’n Save. Sometimes it's for three or four items, sometimes it's just for one item, which it would be my ice cream, and this is really a bummer to me because now I have to go elsewhere to get it and my chicken," Tobias says.
Tobias says the Metcalfe Park community needed that grocery store. Now that's it's closed, the nearest one is a mile away.
The Pick 'n Save closures in Milwaukee are part of Kroger's plan to close 60 stores nationwide within 18 months. According to the company's first quarter report, it expects a quote, "modest financial benefit" as a result.
We pulled into Aldi’s parking lot.
Gransberry made sure everyone had a quarter for a cart.
And off we went.
I followed Gransberry. She grabbed a few items for her and her grandkids. Some buttered pickles, French fries and burgers. Gransberry says she shopped at Pick 'n Save at least twice a week and she liked the convenience.
She says she doesn’t think elected officials in Milwaukee are doing enough to fill in the gap.
"Truthfully, I don’t think they really care and that’s my opinion. I think they should step up and do more to try to find a solution. Instead, we have the community doing the majority of the work trying to find a solution," Gransberry says.
She doesn't think the community should have to do that, but she says "our hearts are leading us to do it."
Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is spearheading mutual aid efforts to feed its neighbors.
And the Hunger Task Force Mobile Market will set up in the former Pick 'n Save lot once a month. The market offers fresh produce, bread, eggs, dairy and meat products.
But that’s a temporary solution.
As for the Metcalfe seniors, they're down to carpool again.
