The degradation of the food retail landscape

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of History, 2017.
This dissertation traces the transformation of the food retail industry in urban America during the twentieth century, with a focus on the changing role of government in food distribution. It examines the “food retail landscape” in Rochester, New York from the 1880s through the 2010s by analyzing city directories and developing corresponding maps. At the beginning of this era, Rochester’s progressive government played an activist role in creating an equitable food retail landscape by establishing a public market, which provided access to fresh foods for individual households, hucksters, and grocers. The municipality faded from the food retail landscape during the chain store era of the 1920s and 1930s, when large grocery companies replaced hucksters and small independent grocers. The landscape became homogeneous, as Hart’s Food Stores operated more than 130 stores in the thirty-four square miles of Rochester, ensuring that every resident had access to the same stores regardless of class. The chain store era, however, started the degradation of the food retail landscape by privatizing the grocery industry. Companies such as Hart’s developed private, sophisticated channels of distribution as they evolved into supermarkets during the 1940s and 1950s. These large companies dominated the food retail landscape and moved into middle-class neighborhoods with families that owned automobiles and refrigerators. The result of this transformation, as well as the lack of government involvement in food distribution during the supermarket era, was the degradation and stratification of the food retail landscape in urban America, as wealthy communities have multiple supermarkets and poor neighborhoods lack grocers.