James Harris makes it a point to greet shoppers at the new Carver Jones Market in Birmingham’s Titusville neighborhood.
“How you doing?” he calls from the produce section to two women who just walked through the market’s front doors. “I know you ladies aren't coming here for Senior Citizens Day, but just in case, it is 10% off today.”
“We came all the way across town today,” one of the women tells him.
“I grew up over here,” the other chimes in.
That kind of buy-in from the community is exactly what market owner Harris said the store needs to succeed. It’s located in one of Birmingham’s many food deserts. These are low-income areas where residents have little access to affordable, healthy food. Nearly 70% of the city’s population lives in these areas, according to a 2019 report from the mayor’s office.
Grocery stores that try to bring relief to food deserts have the economic chips stacked against them. But Carver Jones Market aims to be a model.
Grocery economics
Even under the best circumstances, grocery stores are tough to keep afloat. The items they sell are perishable. And they operate on razor-thin margins, said Harris, who’s been in the grocery business more than three decades.
“You’re only talking between 1 to 3% profit, so very small margins,” he said. “You have to do things strategically.”
Economists say stores that try to make a go of it in food deserts face even more challenges. Most revolve around the need to sell a large number of goods to make up for those low profit margins.
“The low-income segment that you are targeting, their shopping sales volumes are not huge,” said Samir Huseynov, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Auburn University. “So they're still buying, but they're not buying enough for you to cover the cost.”
Which brings up another problem: smaller grocery stores that typically serve food deserts are at a disadvantage when buying goods compared to massive chains like Walmart or Publix.
“They get discounts from suppliers because they buy huge volumes,” Huseynov said of large retailers. “But when we talk about one grocery only serving [a] small community, they are not getting that discount from suppliers.”
Which means they usually can’t beat a big chain’s prices.
A small store might cut costs by dropping items that don’t sell well. But that can backfire. Low-income households are often short on time as well as money, with people working multiple jobs to make ends meet. They might be willing to pay more to reduce travel time and costs, but Huseynov says that advantage disappears when they can’t get everything they need at one place.
“If you have to still go to Walmart to get those products, then it kind of beats the purpose that I can just make one trip, save gas, and just do my weekly grocery shopping at one stop,” he said.
Another issue grocery stores in low-income areas face is they can’t effectively use a common retail strategy many grocery businesses depend on. It’s called category-specific tiered pricing. Grocers place significantly lower markups, or even take a loss, on staple products like milk or a loaf of plain bread, and make up for it with higher profit margins on luxury items.
“There's not going to be a market for Trilogy organic certified kombucha, right?” said Ben Meadows, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “A lot of folks are going to be looking for sustenance. So your ability to provide a suite of goods that can give you a suite of margin is going to be pretty limited.”
Meadows said high-tech strategies such as dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing that large retailers are beginning to employ could further disadvantage smaller grocers. With dynamic pricing, stores place electronic price tags on shelves and can change them instantly to respond to demand or other factors in the marketplace. Surveillance pricing involves charging customers different prices based on guesses about their income.
“Nonprofit or smaller grocery stores that do not have the ability to acquire these crazy technology tools – it's a big question, how will they adapt?”
Finding solutions
James Harris at Carver Jones Market is aware of these challenges. And he has answers.
The market is part of a member-owned buying cooperative that secures volume discounts smaller grocers usually can’t get on their own.
“You buy shares into the company so that you can get product to your store cheaper – as cheap as anybody else,” Harris said.
Harris added the market offers a wide selection of items, in terms of both price and brand.
It’s also developing a co-op of farmers in Alabama’s Black Belt. These partnerships mean fresh produce makes it to the store quickly, extending shelf life. And by cutting out middlemen, prices can be lower than those at the big chains.
“I really think we can take a lead in produce,” Harris said. “We can literally get product that was picked yesterday and the next day it’s in the store.”
Support from local government also is important when it comes to tackling food deserts, Harris said. The city of Birmingham gave Carver Jones Market tax incentives and significant funds to help with start-up costs.
City Councilor Crystal Smitherman said expanding access to healthy food options has been a priority for the council.
“Incentive packages are a core tool in making that possible as part of a broader strategy,” she said.
Harris said he plans to open additional stores through the Carver Jones Foundation, and since they’ll be nonprofits, they’ll be eligible for federal and state tax benefits and programs as well.
The need for those funding avenues is one lesson Harris said he learned from the first Carver Jones Market in Fairfield, which was open about a year and closed in 2025. But Harris doesn’t think stores should be dependent on this kind of support long term.
“At the end of the day, that business must be able to survive on its own,” he said.
He said stores need to do that by integrating into the communities they serve – so that residents see the value in supporting them.
“It can never be that somebody is coming in there to do this for you,” he said. “No, they're coming in to do it with you. You got to play your part, and if you don't play your part, it fails.”
Shopper Donald Dodson is one person who gets that. He lives across the street from the new Carver Jones store and has already been there several times. He said he used to shop at Walmart and Piggly Wiggly but prefers Carver Jones, even though its prices are slightly higher.
“Long as we support our local people, I think everything will be all right,” Dodson said. “It's not a food desert around here anymore. We have at least somewhere we can go that's nearby, especially for the elderly and people that really doesn't have transportation.”
Community gathering place
Harris’ plans to turn the store into a community hub as well as a one-stop shop include adding a pharmacy, deli, coffee shop, cooking classes and a workforce training center.
The store’s name – Carver Jones – represents this bigger mission. The moniker combines the names of George Washington Carver and Frederick McKinley Jones, two Black inventors. Carver made discoveries about crop rotation and uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes. Jones invented portable refrigeration, which helped transport perishable food.
Harris said their legacies are about food access and opportunity.
“These are iconic men that did great things, and it's up under that umbrella that we want young people to understand that there's greatness in them as well,” he said. “And that's what we want to create in the environment is give them an opportunity to thrive.”
In that vein, 50% of the store’s workforce is comprised of high school and first-year college students, Harris said.
Huseynov, the Auburn professor, said building those kinds of community relationships and goodwill can be an economic recipe that works.
