How Big Retailers Squash Small Businesses

By Morgan Harper

brands of granulated sugar. But shortly after Walmart Supercenters entered the Central Ohio grocery market in the early 2000s, Chad Brown explained how he noticed his supplier’s prices were surging. They rose so much that Carl Brown’s struggled to make a profit. Eventually, he was going to Walmart to buy sugar for the store because their prices were lower than he was paying wholesale. That’s when he knew it was over.

charged with regulating competition, only brought one RPA case between 1992 and 2014. The retail grocery industry massively consolidated and behemoths like Walmart began to reign supreme, contributing to the demise of Carl Brown’s and threatening any other entrepreneur daring to become a grocer.

For decades, Mr. Carl Brown Sr. and his independent grocery store on the Near East Side was synonymous with successful Black entrepreneurship, accessible food, and a business that felt like family. We used to swing by when I was little for items, and I felt tremendous pride seeing Carl Brown’s name on the paper bag, knowing it was a Black-owned business.

I had the chance to meet Carl Brown, Sr.’s son, Mr. Chad Brown, and get his take on those final years. I expected to hear about increased poverty and a dwindling customer base, theories typically advanced when Blackowned businesses close in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Instead, he wanted to talk about sugar and how Walmart forced his family out of business.

Carl Brown’s, like most grocery stores, always carried several

The dynamic where Walmart as a power buyer can purchase cheaper goods from manufacturers than small retailers is called “price discrimination” and is completely illegal. In 1936, Congress passed the Robinson-Patman Act (RPA) to ban price discrimination. The law intended to protect smaller grocers from A&P, a monopolist and the Walmart of the 1930s. The federal government enforced the law for decades and protected competition. During this period, a mix of retailers, from corner stores, small retailers like Carl Brown’s, and bigger brands such as Kroger and Big Bear operated in the same geographic markets.

Unfortunately, beginning in the 1970s, a school of thought emerged claiming bigger is more efficient and as long as prices are low, the government should stay out of it. Enforcement plummeted. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a federal agency

But change is happening. Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner confirmed in 2022, gave an early speech on reviving RPA enforcement in September. Forty-three bipartisan members of Congress, including new Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, sent a letter last year to the FTC demanding more enforcement as well. And President Biden issued an executive order calling for a review of the RPA’s benefits.

Often, when businesses in our communities fail, explanations center around helplessness and blame, and certainly myriad factors contribute to any business’s closing. But the end of Carl Brown’s is a story of power and policy. Lax of government enforcement has stacked the deck in favor of big grocers with big campaign dollars. This is not a free market. To ensure we can innovate, build wealth, and honor the Brown family legacy, we all must become fierce anti-monopolists.