DC Council member fears for future of Ward 8’s only grocery store

“This is a message to our community that we stand in solidarity with keeping this food option open,” White told a crowd of news cameras.

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He had just had a meeting with Giants regional management and had come away feeling the need to sound the alarm. The Giant on Alabama Avenue is the only major grocer in the entire department, serving more than 85,000 people, and White had a feeling its future might be in jeopardy. Management reported an increase in shoplifting and crime at Ward 8. The managers, according to White, had spent hundreds of thousands on security upgrades and yet, White said, were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to theft. They did not say they planned to close the store. But still, White was worried, and now some of the residents were relying on it, too.

“If we don’t have it here, there won’t be anywhere else,” said Traci Pratt, a 58-year-old Ward 8 resident who has shopped at Giant since it opened in 2007.

The concern over a single grocery store in Ward 8 underscores the limited access to quality food east of Anacostia River, leaving officials like White to cling to the community’s only available option when its future seems rocky. “This is more than just a grocery store — it’s a central part of our community hub,” White said.

It’s not entirely clear how rocky it is for Giant. The store declined to provide financial information to The Washington Post about the impact of the shoplifting, but issued an assurance in a statement that it has no “current plans” to close.

“But we have to be able to run our stores safely and profitably,” Read the statement, sent by spokesperson Felis Andrade. “The reality is that theft and violence in this store is significant, and getting worse, not better. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to work in these conditions.”

The giant filled a huge gap in Ward 8 when it opened its doors in 2007. The grand opening attracted a visit from the mayor, gaggles of reporters, balloons, excited shoppers and even serenades from violinists. At the time, it had been about a decade since the ward had its own full-service grocery store, and so the thought of losing it again — for those who have watched this space evolve from a weedy field into a crowded retail center — is enough to cause hand-wringing.

On Friday, the parking lot was full, the checkout lines were packed and for safety there was a mobile police camera hovering in the parking lot and a security guard standing at the door.

The Giants’ leadership began to go public with widespread concerns about theft and crime in news reports earlier this year. It wasn’t just Ward 8, and it wasn’t just Giant. Retailers across the country have been leaving major city centers, citing problems with increased organized retail crime as well as lower foot traffic and inflation-related issues.

Grocery stores run on thin profit margins, so higher operating, labor and rent costs have put even more pressure on businesses. Giant Food, which has 165 supermarkets in D.C., Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, has not closed any stores yet and has made some efforts to avoid doing so, the company’s president said Ira Kress told The Post in May. With theft and crime as one of the most common issues, Giant limited the number of entries shops to create more barriers for shoplifters – a tactic that drew objections from the city fire inspector. Stores also lock in more merchandise; shady shelves of high value, often stolen items; limiting self-checkout for 20 items; and install wall automats that sound when items are removed.

As retailers leave some cities, one grocery chain tries to stay

“We have invested in a number of measures to mitigate the problem in this store, and in many stores, but we also need the help and partnership of the community and local officials to really combat the theft and violence that continues to escalate,” a Giant spokesman said in the statement on Friday.

White noted that Giants regional management planned to sit down with the city’s economic development department in the mayor’s office, possibly as soon as next week, something a department spokesman, Ben Fritsch, said is part of ongoing conversations about how the city can help retain the store safe and prosperous.

White stressed to all residents who can have listened that they should turn to non-profit partners who provide assistance with food security issues if they cannot afford food items, rather than resorting to theft.

“We know these are tough times and we know the price of food has skyrocketed over the last three years,” he said. “But we can’t afford to hurt ourselves by constantly taking from the store, because that means everyone will be without a place to eat.”

Jo Patterson of the East of the River Public Safety Consortium put it this way: “If people are hungry, they will — I’m not going to use the word ‘take.’ I’m going to use the word ‘survive.’ average.”

She questioned whether the cost of theft could possibly be more than the money Giant has made for the community.

Tiffany Williams, CEO of Martha’s Table, a nonprofit that strives to increase access to healthy, high-quality food, said her organization has seen a recent uptick in demand for services with the combination of inflationary food prices and pandemic-era aid winding down. For example, she noted, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were cut for many families in March.

“The reality is we just need more investment in Ward 8, more investment across the board. Let’s start with more grocery stores,” Williams said, noting that of the district’s more than 50 grocery stores, only three are located east of the river in Wards 7 and 8 , leaving many residents in “food deserts”.

Rita May, 35, watched her daughter play in a bounce house at the resource fair and didn’t even want to think about how life would change if Giant wasn’t in her neighborhood.

“I was going to die!” she exclaimed, picturing herself lugging her grocery bags and a stroller on public transportation to buy food elsewhere in the city. “I would be devastated, I really would.”

She used to live across the street from the lot the giant stands on in the 1990s, when it was nothing, just a weedy lot home to an abandoned National Guard camp. “It was bad,” she recalled. But now she can go here, every other day, to buy formula when she needs it. Was it shoplifting? Sure, but “it happens everywhere, not just here — even in the Navy Yard.”

It was also what irked Pratt, who hated to think that if the department were to lose its only quality grocery store, wouldn’t it just get worse?

“It would be a complete injustice,” she said.

Jaclyn Peiser contributed to this report.