Finding signs of hope in the food deserts of Dallas

As many prepare for Thanksgiving feasts, thousands of families across North Texas will struggle to put food on the table.

That's why nonprofits are sounding the alarm about the ongoing food desert crisis in parts of DFW.

City data shows over 36% of Dallas residents live in food deserts, which are areas where people have very limited access to grocery stores and healthy foods at affordable prices. According to the USDA, grocery stores are few and far between in these areas and residents often have to walk or drive longer distances to access healthy food like fresh produce in a supermarket or large grocery store.

This map by the USDA illustrates what that looks like, with concentrations in South Dallas, West Dallas and parts of East Dallas.

Nonprofit organizations generally have to step in to fill the gaps, like the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has with its Southern Dallas Thrives initiative.

"It's really been a historical build around the Southern sector being historically under-resourced and underserved," said Ashley Douglas, Vice President of Community Impact for United Way of Metro Dallas.

Since 2018, the initiative – which was created in partnership with the PepsiCo Foundation and Frito-Lay North America – has been working with a network of churches and organizations to help the area improve education outcomes for youth, provide nutritious meals for families, and offer a wide range of supportive services for working families.

"Not having access to nutritious foods and to food items of choice has been a big part of that issue. And really ensuring that families and individuals within the sector have accessibility to those items is pretty crucial in our focus within Southern Dallas Thrives,” said Douglas.

This weekend, the United Way gave over 1,100 families a 60-pound holiday food box to set them up for Thanksgiving.

But it comes amid a difficult year. Two Save A Lot grocery stores ended up closing earlier this year after only two years of re-opening under new ownership. The closures were a huge blow to the already vulnerable population in Southern Dallas.

A silver lining was the opening of HEB's discount grocery store Joe V's in the summer off Wheatland Road.

Over the years, the city of Dallas has tried luring more grocery stores to the area with cash offer initiatives, but the development is slow going. NBC 5 reached out to the city to request details on any new opportunities for grocery or retail development in Southern Dallas and is waiting to hear back.

The continued stagnation in getting new development into the area is putting more pressure on nonprofits to meet needs in the community.

"While we work to fill some of these gaps, we recognize that sustainability-wise, this is not going to be the end-all, be-all approach. It's going to take a collective of sectors to be able to get together to really hone in on this issue,” said Douglas. "I like to oftentimes say this wasn't the issues that we see in Southern Dallas were not created by a particular sector in silo. And so they won't be able to be resolved and or solved by a particular sector."

For now, families have to walk or drive further to find food that's not fast food, which is often the fallback in food deserts and can have long-term health effects on the community.

"Southern Dallas, unfortunately, has a 20-year less lifespan than what we see of northern counterparts when we start talking about health outcomes and impact metrics,” said Douglas. "So what it's caused us to do is to have to look at innovative ways to really approach and look at how we address food accessibility and the access of food. And we've been able to do so under the Southern Dallas Thrives initiative by really working with local nonprofit organizations to address some of those gaps."

One nonprofit working to fill the gaps is Ruthie's For Good, a popular gourmet food truck that is opening a permanent café in South Dallas on the 1600 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The café will support St. Philip’s School and Community Center, with all proceeds going directly to help fund work St. Philip's is doing in the South Dallas community.

"This is an area that has been underserved and underrepresented for decades. This community deserves everything that my neighborhood has. There should be grocery stores, cafes, a place to grab coffee and work, and a place that feels like home and welcome you. We are honored to be a very small part of this," said Ashlee Kleinert, founder of Ruthie's For Good.

An opening date is currently set for the beginning of 2025.

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Ruthie's also provides second chances by hiring individuals affected by the legal system and helps individuals reintegrate into society as a fresh start employer.

Kleinert hopes that the opening of Ruthie's Cafe can attract more buzz and opportunities to South Dallas.

"Like the law of physics, mass attracts mass. It's our hope and prayer that the activity of Ruthie's Café will attract more activity," she said. "The more activity, the more opportunities for engagement with the community. We want to serve this community with the respect and dignity they so richly deserve."

COMMUNITY MARKETS

Another innovative approach in South Dallas includes a growing concept called community markets.

Empowering the Masses on Samuell Boulevard is the latest example of this.

Each week, the community market offers struggling families free food to help offset costs, but it does so in a way that preserves dignity, according to executive director Tammy Johnson.

"We know there's a negative connotation attached to the word 'food pantry' when you feel like you can't feed your family and have to go and ask for help," she said.

The market mimics a typical grocery store with aisles of fresh produce, meat, and healthy foods. Instead of getting the food donations in a box, families can grab a cart, pick out the food they need and get the food bagged up like a traditional grocery experience.

"So that when they go home, if they never had to explain to their children that we're experiencing food insecurity, they're none the wiser,” said Johnson. "And I feel like there's dignity in that. It's a hand up and not a handout."

Empowering the Masses started as a food pantry in a South Dallas church but found support from Southern Dallas Thrives to open a permanent location in 2023. Johnson pulls from her own experience to run the market as best as she can.

"My sisters and I grew up in poverty. My mom didn't have the ability to feed us on a regular basis. So we found ourselves visiting food pantries and it wasn't always the best experience," said Johnson. "A lot of our clients are women-led households, minority-led women households. Moms with multiple children leading their households, not making a living wage and trying to decide, if I'm going to pay my rent or pay my light bill and then provide groceries, or can my child participate in that after-school program?"

Another component of the market are shopping ambassadors, which Johnson said is a key part in helper to solve the 'why' to food insecurity. They help funnel many clients into career training programs to help lift families out of food insecurity. Vendors come in twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday to offer social, health and educational services.

"We call them shopping ambassadors because we want people to know that we're here to walk hand in hand with you to address whatever issues you're having and form a relationship so that we can know and get to the root cause of why you're experiencing food insecurity," Johnson said.

The market sits in the middle of a food desert that Johnson said is mostly occupied by liquor stores. She’s hoping to change that.

"We're strategic because this used to be an old liquor store. And when we're talking about addressing the social determinants of health and the social drivers of health, that's one of the things that's causing our neighborhood not to be as healthy as they can be because there's lack of access to healthy quality foods,” she said. "We need to make sure that whatever we're putting in the community is something that's walkable for a lot of our neighbors. We serve about 500 families each and every week. There's never been a Saturday that we don't have less than 60 people walking to the community market to get groceries to take home to their family."

Johnson believes there's a lack of connection between retailers and the community and hopes to see more conversations in the future to create a path toward real change.

"We have to know from both sides. We need to know what the community needs, but we also need to know what the retailers need in order to be successful," she said. "I think it's going to take more conversations from both sides to understand but then also for the retailers to know that they're going to come to a place where they're going to be sustainable for long term."

Empowering the Masses is gearing up for a massive Thanksgiving distribution but is short about 250 turkeys. Click here for more details on how to help.