Sprouting Up

After a slow start, the Healthy Corner Stores initiative is planting oases in food deserts

BY BRANDON RODRIGUEZ

For many who reside around convenience store owner Iqbal Karediya’s Skyway Food Mart on South Flores Street, the shop isn’t just their closest source for groceries but the one they frequent most.

Until 2019, Karediya’s store carried only the same shelf-stable fare as most of its type: Takis, Skittles and Lone Star Beer. Fresh produce simply wasn’t an option. Then he enrolled in San Antonio’s Healthy Corner Stores Program.

Karediya said his participation has been “helpful” to the community in which he operates and thinks highly enough of it that he recommends it to other convenience-store operators.

The Healthy Corner Stores initiative launched in 2019 when then-District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran secured $50,000 in city funding to launch a pilot program to supply affordable fresh produce to neighborhood stores. Such stores are the primary shopping destination for many families in low-income neighborhoods, especially families without reliable transportation.

Under the program, the city supplies participating stores with no-cost refrigeration units and access to affordable fresh produce in exchange for the promise they’ll make it available to customers.

Initially, the program focused on Viagran’s South Side district, appearing to offer a straightforward solution to combat San Antonio’s food insecurity problem, health and nutrition problems.

Since then, then program has grown from eight participating stores to more than 30, according to the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. But it’s been slow going. The early days were riddled with stock fresh produce if it doesn’t make economic sense. problems securing produce distributors, then came the pandemic, lagging supply chains and frequent leadership turnover.

Still, those who see the program’s vital role in improving San Antonio’s health are keeping it alive and growing.

“This is not a program many people in the produce industry are overly excited to be a part of,” said Jamie Gonzalez, president of the Food Policy Council of San Antonio, and one of Healthy Corner Stores’ key drivers. “You have to really want to operate in this realm to think this is a good opportunity.”

The program’s original supplier, River City Produce, exited Heathy Corner Stores a year after it launch, highlighting one of its realities: No matter how good a program’s intentions, it needs to make financial sense for all parties involved.

Economic sense

Gonzalez, known locally as “La Puta de la Fruta” for her years of food advocacy, said she’s managed to right the course for the initiative and keep it growing by finding ways to make the numbers work.

For large-scale produce distributors, such as River City, fulfilling produce orders that run into the thousands of pounds makes more sense than servicing convenience stores that may buy in quantities of as little as 10 and 20 pounds.

And for store owners such as Karediya, it becomes vital to be able to obtain products at a good cost. After all, if a store owner has to mark up a carton of strawberries so much that consumers can’t justify the expense, the program has failed.

When River City exited, Gonzalez became instrumental in finding its replacement: Big State Produce Co.

The connection made sense, in part because Gonzalez is Big State’s director of Community Feeding Programs. She said the business is able to work within the confines of the Healthy Corner Stores Program because in addition to standard truck deliveries, it uses alternative delivery methods, such as gig drivers, for whom smaller deliveries are economically viable.

To ensure the economics work out for store owners, Gonzalez makes a proactive effort to keep them current with what produce items are affordable at the moment and which are prohibitively expensive. For example, a dramatic rise in iceberg lettuce prices doesn’t make it a financially viable option for many small retailers right now.

“We price-monitor and work with store owners, advising them when specific produce options rise in price,” Gonzalez explained.

One of the owners who regularly turns to Gonzalez for advice is Ian Ismail of Red Rooster Meat Market, a Southeast San Antonio neighborhood grocery store in the middle of a food desert. Red Rooster joined the program in 2019, becoming one of the first stores in the initiative.

“The program gave us the ability to try a different variety of vegetables that we wouldn’t usually order to find the perfect combination for our customer’s taste,” said Ismail, who places produce orders twice a week through the program.

The stock at participating shops can vary widely, according to Gonzalez. Some owners may stock bare essentials such as limes, tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeños and onions due to space constraints.

Others, including Red Rooster, carve out much larger sections of their stores for fresh produce. On a recent visit to the small grocery store, which was populated by neighborhood residents and truckers fueling up outside, the fresh produce offerings included cases of apples and oranges along with cucumbers, cauliflower and pre-packaged fruit salads.

Pandemic stress

After the start of the pandemic, Healthy

Corner Stores also grappled with the same supply-chain breakdowns that beset the business world, according to Gonzalez. The trouble wasn’t so much finding the produce as it was tracking down the refrigerated storage units retailers needed.

Organizers are still struggling through delayed deliveries of the equipment, although that’s recently improved, Gonzalez said. Ultimately, it may just be one of those difficulties the program has to ride out.

As the COVID crisis set in, the oversight of Healthy Corner Stores also underwent a serious restructuring. Initially, the program involved University of the Incarnate Word’s School of Osteopathic Medicine, Metro Health, the Food Policy Council, the San Antonio Food Bank and other entities.

It’s now been streamlined, and Metro Health oversees the program while getting advisory assistance from the Food Policy Council. According to Anna Macnak, health program manager for Metro Health, the consolidation ultimately proved instrumental to the program getting on track.

On the right track

While the number of organizations helming Healthy Corner Stores has dwindled, Gonzalez pointed to its growing participation at the retail level as a sign of its forward momentum.

Metro Health expects to add eight more stores during the first quarter of this year, which appears to put it on the path to meet or exceed the organization’s goal of it serving 50 stores by Sept. 30, 2026.

What’s more, the program is now a key component of the SA Forward Plan, which Metro Health launched in 2022 to promote healthy behaviors across Bexar County to address the area’s numerous health challenges, including diabetes and obesity.

In October 2022, Metro Health further expanded funding for Healthy Corner Stores, issuing a contract that made Big State its sole produce distributor for the next five years.

Now that Healthy Corner Stores appears to be on the right track, it’s attracted the interest of entities and city leaders outside of San Antonio, according to Gonzalez. So far, the city of Houston and the American Heart Association have examined the program to see if it can be replicated elsewhere, she said.

Even though former councilwoman Viagran hasn’t been involved with the program for some time, she’s proud of its progress. She said she smiles each time she hears a new store is added to the list.

“This is a great program, and I am glad the city invested,” Viagran told the Current. “I am glad people are still very much involved and excited about it.”

The coming five years will be crucial to the longevity of the Healthy Corner Stores Program, Gonzalez said.

By leveraging San Antonio’s abundance of convenience stores, the program is helping rebuild the legacy of San Antonio’s racist redlining, one of the key causes of its lingering food insecurity issue, according to experts.

And advocates including Gonzalez soon may have quantitative evidence to show the lasting effects of the program on the health and wellbeing of San Antonio residents.

The city is gearing up to launch a largescale food systems study, which will examine programs such as the Healthy Corner Stores Program.

Gonzalez said she expects the data will show what she’s long argued — that the initiative’s worth goes well beyond the produce it helps sell.

“This program is about creating access where it doesn’t exist,” she said.