> East Palo Alto has only one, and struggled for years without a grocery store or bank.
I understand that it's an independent polity, but it's also surrounded by other urban areas.
I can get a 51 minute bus ride from an apartment complex in East Palo Alto to a Safeway, which does cost about $5 but that's a discussion for another day; my point is, East Palo Alto only has "one grocery store" if you ignore everything surrounding it.
An hour's bus ride (assuming you catch the schedule right) each way is pretty ruinous for someone working long hours or with kids to look after. I think it hardly counts as "local".
Sounds really bad having to go by bus for an hour, I have 2-10 stores within walking distance (3-35 minutes), in a similarly sized and populated area. It would be really interesting understanding why there are no stores in some areas.
Not a sufficient amount of profit to be made. Could be lack of sufficient number of customers to offset cost of developing a store (most likely), or zoning and permitting issues making it difficult to obtain the legal rights to open one.
Many people prefer only going to the big stores, such as Target and Costco and other large regional or nationwide companies, so not much room left for independent owners unless they’re in a very dense area where there’s enough people wanting to go to their smaller stores.
There's only one real grocery store (Mi Tierra Linda) on the east side of 101, and the other side of 101 is mostly residential. You don't get much more shopping until you get close to El Camino, and most of the grocery stores you'll find there (like the Whole Foods near the Palo Alto train station) are targeting a much more upscale market.
Depends on how you define "city", but one city I lived in only has one grocery store now; it has a population under 10,000, so whether you call that a "city" is up to you.
