Not long ago, Hyattsville City Councilmember Kevin Nisbett (Ward 5) made a statement that most neighbors would find completely unremarkable but would make many other county residents quite jealous. During an interview for this article, he said, “I live near the Metro station, and I can walk to several supermarkets.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture considers a “walkable distance” for grocery shopping as within half a mile. A grocery store or supermarket is usually defined as a place where you can buy the ingredients for a healthy meal, offering whole and skim milk, fresh meats, fruits and vegetables. By contrast, a convenience store’s fresh, healthy offerings may only include a few apples, bananas or oranges, and a dollar-type store might not sell anything fresh besides milk.
Recently, research into America’s rising obesity rates has gone beyond studying junk food to investigating the impact of living in “food deserts” and “food swamps.” Both have been linked to higher rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
A food desert is basically a community with few places to buy the ingredients to make a healthy meal. But since middle-class suburbs miles from a supermarket are not labeled food deserts, other definitions, like that of the USDA, include factors like poverty rates and car ownership.
A food swamp hosts a high concentration of fast-food restaurants and/or convenience stores that mainly offer high-calorie, fatty foods, sugary drinks or salty packaged snacks.
Nisbett’s close proximity to several supermarkets should seem mundane. But compared to other communities in the county, state and the District of Columbia, Hyattsville has such an unusually high concentration of healthy food choices that it should be considered a “food rainforest.” The University of Maryland’s 2021 Food Access and Equity in Prince George’s County study calculated the average density of supermarkets in Prince George’s County at 1.17 per square mile. Nisbett lives near the West Hyattsville Metro station, near the intersection of Hamilton Street and Ager Road. According to Google Maps, there are at least four supermarkets within a half mile of this station: Bestway (.30 miles), Megamart (.30 miles), Lidl (.36 miles) and Aldi (.29 miles). That’s at least three times more supermarkets per square mile than the county average. The Hyattsville Crossing Metro, across from the Mall at Prince George’s, has grocery stores even closer: Giant (.13 miles), Target (.24 miles) and Safeway (.31 mi).
Here’s another comparison: In a recent debate, candidates for D.C. mayor discussed how to address the food desert in the District’s Ward 7, which is east of the Anacostia, abuts Prince George’s County and has a median household income of about $71,000 a year. Ward 7 has just three grocery stores to sustain 91,000 people, or about 1 per 30,300 residents, compared to Ward 3, which abuts Montgomery County, is west of Rock Creek Park and has a median household income of about $155,000 a year and 17 supermarkets serving 81,000 people, which comes to about 1 per 4,765 residents.
However, the City of Hyattsville, with a 2010 population of 21,000 and a median income of $92,000, hosts at least six grocery stores: Aldi, Bestway, Giant, Safeway, Target and Yes! Organic Market — and at least two others, Lidl and Megamart, just outside the city limits. This comes to 1 per every 2,625 residents, or about 185% more stores per person than the District’s much richer Ward 3.
Hyattsville City Councilmember Danny Schaible (Ward 2) told the Life & Times (L&T) that Hyattsville’s population density and its old — and, therefore, relatively affordable — retail infrastructure allow it to support so many grocery stores. He cited a video from Queen Elizabeth’s 1957 trip to America, when she attended a football game at the University of Maryland and then toured the Giant supermarket at the Queenstown shopping mall on Queens Chapel Road in Chillum.
By the 1970s, this neighborhood also had a Shoppers Food Warehouse (formerly Jumbo) and a Safeway on Hamilton Street, just a few blocks away, all within walking distance of a large number of apartment buildings. The opening of the West Hyattsville Metro station, in 1993, along with new townhouse developments have since boosted West Hyattsville’s consumer base.
The Shoppers Food Warehouse eventually closed, and both the Giant and Safeway relocated to Hyattsville Crossing, an even higher-density area with an explosion of new mid-rise apartment buildings. However, unlike in many other places, like Baltimore, where closed grocery stores often create food deserts, in West Hyattsville, the Giant has been replaced by a Lidl, the Shoppers by a Megamart, and the Safeway by a Bestway.
Lidl and Aldi are backed by huge international corporations. But how are the ethnically focused independents, Megamart and Bestway, surviving? In a 2021 The Week article, Jeff Wells, a senior editor at Grocery Dive magazine, an industry publication, explained that “Asian and Hispanic grocers tend to serve a more loyal customer base because they offer products and services that shoppers can’t find elsewhere. … Being the preferred store for a large stable group of customers gives these businesses more financial flexibility than a corner store with a selection much like a supermarket’s, only with a much smaller selection and probably more costly.”
The ethnic diversity of Hyattsville and its immediate neighbors Chillum, Brentwood and Mount Rainier also helps create demand for smaller specialty shops, including Bonivia International Foods, on Hamilton Street across from the Aldi; Motojesi International Market, on Route 1 near Streetcar 82 Brewing Co.; International Progresso Market, in the Shoppes at Metro Station off Belcrest Road; and Mount Rainier’s Adot International Market, a tiny Ethiopian shop that replaced a dry cleaners near the corner of Chillum and Queen’s Chapel roads.
Other factors likely contributing to the Hyattsville area’s healthy food infrastructure are a relatively low crime rate, which allows stores to stay open later, and a political commitment to making it easier and safer for residents to walk or bike to local businesses rather than drive to larger retailers farther away.
Steve Shaff, a longtime consultant on local community development told the L&T, “The desire to buy local is a big reason the Glut Co-op in Mount Rainier has survived,” he said. “Now that you can buy organic products at Whole Foods or Yes!, many of [Glut’s] prices are not competitive. But they have long-term personal connections to customers who value their mission and are willing to pay more to keep Glut part of the neighborhood.”
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Paul Ruffins is a citizen scientist and a professor of curiosity.