After its only grocery closes, Fla. town opens its own store

Mayor Sean Lynch in Baldwin Market. (Washington Post photo by Antonia Farzan)

Baldwin had a problem. In 2018, the community's only grocery store shut down, leaving the Florida town of about 1,600 in the same county as Jacksonville with few options for fresh, local groceries. The nearest grocery was 10 miles away, and the only local options were fast food from a nearby truck stop or canned goods from the Dollar General. Since the town has a significant population of seniors and the poor, many of whom don't drive or must share a car, leaving town for food isn't usually feasible, Antonia Farzan reports for The Washington Post.

Baldwin, in Duval County (Wikipedia)

So Sean Lynch, mayor of the staunchly Republican town, proposed opening a grocery store operated by the local government. "Abandoned by mainstream supermarkets whose business models don’t have room for low profit margins, both urban and rural communities nationwide have turned to resident-owned co-ops or nonprofits to fill the gap," Farzan reports. "But Baldwin is trying something different. At the Baldwin Market, which opened its doors on Sept. 20, all of the employees are on the municipal payroll, from the butcher to the cashiers. Workers from the town’s maintenance department take breaks from cutting grass to help unload deliveries, and residents flag down the mayor when they want to request a specific type of milk."

Lynch said the city isn't trying to make a profit, but if the market is profitable, the money will go back into improving the city. A few other towns have done the same thing, with good results. "Notably, these experiments in communal ownership are taking place in deep-red parts of the country where the word 'socialism' is anathema," Farzan reports. And a collectively owned, government-run operation like Baldwin Market is socialist by definition. "But in many rural, conservative communities struggling to hang on to their remaining residents, ideological arguments about the role of government tend to be cast aside as grocery stores shutter because of population decline and competition from superstores."

Many small towns are struggling to attract new residents, and not having a grocery store can be a deal-breaker. So "food access becomes almost like a utility that you have to have for the town to exist," said David Procter, director of the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University. Lynch thinks along the same lines. "We take the water out of the ground and we pump it to your house and charge you," Lynch told Farzan. "So what’s the difference with a grocery store?"