Thursday, December 18, 2025

Where is the Food?

 The Jackson City Council is going to discuss the dearth of grocery stores in Jackson.  The Council announced on social media: 

The Jackson City Council will host a Special Council Meeting (Public Hearing) on Thursday, January 22 at 6:00 PM in the City Council Chambers at City Hall (219 S. President St.) to discuss grocery store access and vitality across our city.
The hearing will bring together grocery store owners and community members to discuss food access in Jackson and explore ways the City can support existing stores, prevent closures, and attract new grocery options.
We encourage anyone interested in participating in this hearing—particularly owners of current grocery stores, former store owners, those considering opening a store, and residents—to sign up at bit.ly/jacksongrocery.
All seven members of Jackson’s City Council stand firm in our commitment to ensure our local grocery store businesses can thrive, and in our commitment to ensure all residents can enjoy high-quality grocery shopping.

Good luck.  

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grocery stores would come in droves if they didn’t think they would be robbed blind. National chains don’t hate Jackson citizens, they hate being stolen from.

Anonymous said...

Shoplifting and crime drive out businesses. It’s as simple as that.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for giving the populous of The Capitol City over a month to prepare for this momentous occasion.

Anonymous said...

Stop the shoplifting and stealing. That will do it.

Anonymous said...

Why not activate the national Guarge and the Army Reserve to police the shopping lots, and overlook the in store theft.

Anonymous said...

Oh boy, here we go.

Anonymous said...

We have a pack of dumba****s leading the City of Jackson if they don't know why…

Anonymous said...

You mean that includes Stokes.

Anonymous said...

Oh boy. I bet this was a Parkison idea. Let’s “discuss” or have a “study”. How about stop crime and boom plenty of grocery stores!

Anonymous said...

What a giant waste of everyone's time.

Anonymous said...

What a giant waste of everyone's time.

Anonymous said...

Stop all the shoplifting and they would had never left.

Anonymous said...

food deserts due to high theft..?????

Clay Edwards said...

Ok I'll bite, it's the natives. There, I just saved them the time of having to have a stupid meeting or town hall

fed up in Jackson said...

Ummmm....proper infrastructure, drivable roads, safe intersections, law enforcement presence, and simply a safe city where people don't shoplift stores blind.....that would be a really good start

Anonymous said...

the state that is the runaway leader in morbid obesity now says ''where's the food''?

tell me what im missing here?

Anonymous said...

Why the spaghetti noodles not in a sealed package?

Anonymous said...

Find customers that pay for their items before you start looking for a grocery store.

Anonymous said...

See capitalism. Y'all (city leaders) ran off the stores because they couldn't afford to stay in business and make a profit after y'all ran off the good customers and replaced them with the hoodlums and dependents that are the hallmark of your liberal gimme racist politics.

Anonymous said...

If you want to attract grocery stores, STOP THE CRIME in Jackson.

Anonymous said...

What's needed is a focus group and a balloon release followed by a study funded with a $750,000 grant.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't Trump just do another executive order commanding stores to return? It would really help the GOP's approval numbers with the black community.

Anonymous said...

Prediction: here’s what will happen- the city elected officials will meet with the public, they will appear to listen, they will say they have heard the people and will consider what has been said, nothing significant will be done so that nothing changes, but everyone can feel good because the city officials listened to commoners’ voices

Anonymous said...

After many a lengthy meeting, after several community forums, the city council will come to the conclusion that Grocery Stores are, in fact, racist. /sarcasm

Anonymous said...

Here is the fundamental problem, dumbasscrats think businesses exist to provide jobs and taxes, Republicans know businesses exist to make profit for the owners. Everything else is a side effect.

Anonymous said...

Worked for Kroger for 10 years through high school and college. If I owned the Kroger on I-55 I would close it. Margins in that business are 3% to 5% at most.
Theft and low margins are killing it. The loss of all those grocery carts alone would kill most grocery stores. Also Walmart, Costco and Online Shopping hurt grocery stores as well.

Anonymous said...

Stokes ain’t missing no meals. Just follow him around to his feeding troughs.

Anonymous said...

Businesses want to make money. And everybody’s money is green. It doesn’t matter your age, race, nationality, etc. So grocery stores will gladly come if they can make money.

The problem is employee base, employee safety, shoplifting, vandalism, etc. I’m not going to open a store knowing I can’t find employees in the area because they don’t work or aren’t trainable, an employee or customer is robbed in the parking lot leading to me being sued, shoplifting is a constant problem, and a window gets busted out at 3 AM.

Anonymous said...

The solution to “food deserts” would be socialist, government-run food distribution centers. You still see them in the DPRK and Cuba. Interestingly enough, both countries have a two-tier grocery system. The one the locals use with their “special” money and the one foreigners can use with currency of a different color that is converted to foreign currency. The locals can go into the foreign currency shops but they can’t shop there with their money.
This is what Jackson needs. Stores just for EBT that Jackson stocks with staples like rice, lentils, and beans, and WIC milk.

Anonymous said...

I'll never go back to the Kroger on Old Canton Road, Ridgeland. Last time I shopped there, I struggled to thread my way through all the teenage employees congregating together in aisles filled with boxes of food they were supposed to be restocking, scrolling on their cell phones, and rudely saying they didn't know where the bread was located. That store needs new management. I suspect it is "failing", too, because fewer people are willing to deal with its incompetence and rude employees.

Sometimes stores fail because they don't restock their shelves, don't monitor their employees, and are rude to customers.

Anonymous said...

Comment at 7:01AM hit the nail on the head.

Kingfish said...

Typical profit in grocery stores is a penny or so on the dollar. That's it although the smaller, more boutique ones probably have higher margins. The problem is the grocery trend is going to big stores and there will be only a few of them in towns such as Jackson.

That means Walmarts and Krogers. You might see some Corner Markets or similar pop up but that's it. Walmart has the neighborhood market but it has chosen not to place any in Jackson.

When in school, I worked at Sack and Save and then went to the Kroger on West and Northside. Big difference as the clientele at Kroger was much poorer. The orders were much smaller. The items had smaller margins. Not many people were buying steaks, for example. They weren't buying cokes but going for the cheaper stuff. Much harder to make a profit in stores in those areas.

As for closing Kroger, I think you would be surprised how well it does. I-55 and Clinton Krogers rank very high among all Kroger stores.

Anonymous said...

Excerpt: “explore ways the City can support existing stores, prevent closures, and attract new grocery options.”

You cannot make this level of extreme stupidity in this excerpt up. It’s the crime stupid. It’s the crime stupid. It’s the crime stupid. It’s the crime stupid. It’s the crime stupid. It’s the crime stupid.

But Democrats are the Party of Crime…..and Democrats Looooooove Criminals (gotta keep that non-Democrat voter flight in place) so scratch this 2 + 2 = 4 common sense option and get some White Liberal Democrat combined with anti-semitic, Zohran Mamdani Muslim solutions on the table.

Anonymous said...

Isn’t that the truth

Anonymous said...

Exactly ! Since when can the city council tell grocery stores what to do 🙄🙄

Anonymous said...

The future of grocery shopping will be done on line mainly because of convenience for customer if they can read, write, have computer skills and have math skills. On line grocery shopping is growing slowly. Unfortunately the kids are not learning what they should to succeed in life to have skills to order on line. Thus bad things happen.

There was a Kroger on Northside Drive at corner of Hanging Moss 20 years ago. It closed because the theft was so bad crooks were hauling shopping carts of groceries out of there. Online shopping is the solution and shut all the grocery stores down. Stores make more money, it’s safer and you have to pay to get the groceries before they are picked up or delivered.. Then a lot of these problems go away.

Anonymous said...

Here comes Parkinson the egg noodle telling us Jackson needs to re-imagine grocery stores.

Anonymous said...

I just had an epiphany!! Let the City of Jackson reimburse the grocery stores for the theft and shoplifting it allows its residents to commit. Or, staff the stores with specially designated officers to monitor and arrest shoplifters. Then, have judges that issue six month mandatory jail sentences to perpetrators. Of course, that would backfire as within three months 2/3 of Jackson's population would be behind bars. Same song, second verse for every ghetto urban environment.

Anonymous said...

The 55 Kroger is practically the only large grocery store in town and I could deal with it if the store would just open enough self-checkouts to serve the customer base but it really pisses me off to wait in line to check myself out.

Anonymous said...

No desserts in the food desert.

Anonymous said...

We are approaching a point where these low-paying jobs like employees of fast food restaurants and grocery stores will be rendered unnecessary by robots. They’ll have no other skills, be unemployable, and then what to do with them? Pay them a monthly stipend to cover the cost of weed or designer kicks so they’ll stay in their own part of town?

Anonymous said...

Why do y’all care? Most of you don’t live in Jackson and if you do, you’re too afraid of black folks to leave your own house anyway.

Anonymous said...

I remember a Kroger on Raymond Rd near McDowell and the Leavell Woods store on Terry Rd. Both have been closed about 15 years. The Clinton Kroger has been trashy several years for obvious reasons.


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