Detroit a food desert? Tour aims to prove otherwise

When Charles Walker met the co-owner of E&L Supermercado today, the talk turned to what until recently has been a common assumption about Detroit.

 

Walker asked what Mike Fienman thinks about the people who say Detroit is a food desert.

 

"I wake up every day (and) I know they're lying," said Fienman, 37, of Bloomfield Hills.

 

 

Fienman is a third-generation grocer. His grandfather, Ed Fienman, started the grocery store on West Vernor Highway in southwest Detroit in the 1940s and he's proud of the operation, which has been in its current building for 16 years and boasts fresh and marinated meats and an overflowing array of produce and other products.

 

"We wanted to make the suburbs jealous," Fienman said of his store as Walker and about 50 others looked around during a tour of four neighborhood grocery stores in Detroit.

 

The Detroit Economic Growth Corp.'s Green Grocer Project organized the tour, which also had stops at Honey Bee Market on Bagley and Garden Fresh Marketplace and Prince Valley Market, both on Michigan Avenue, to showcase some of the investments made by Detroit's full-service independent grocery stores. Several of those on the tour said they came because of general curiosity or because they have an interest in Detroit's food offerings.

 

Walker, 57, of Detroit knows grocery stores.

 

He used to own a grocery story on Detroit's east side and now runs the Double Up Food Bucks program for the nonprofit Fair Food Network, which helps Bridge Card users get more fruits and vegetables.

 

He believes the food desert critique is fiction but that some city grocers in the past did not always reinvest in their operations. Walker said resident choices make a difference.

 

"If you get stores in the city like this, you've got to support (them)," Walker said.

 

Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, represents a group that has long bristled at the perception of Detroit as a food desert. Manna, who estimated that 85% of the grocers in Detroit are Chaldean, said many of the critics of Detroit's grocery offerings "haven't stepped foot in these stores."

 

"These kinds of tours are long overdue. Many of these grocers have been providing services to Detroit residents for 30, 40 or more years," Manna said. "There are plenty of food options."

 

Another tour participant, Cydney Camp, 21, of Southfield took a sample of barbacoa, a "seasoned slow-cooked boneless beef," from the E&L Supermercado marinade counter and proclaimed it "awesome."