Economy
Can Whole Foods Remake Itself in the Middle of a Food Desert?
The high-end grocer will move into one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.
In the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, 42 percent of households currently live below the federal poverty line. The unemployment rate of 21 percent is almost twice the city's average. An aerial view of the community shows a startling number of vacant lots, and a walk through it would offer scant retail.
In nearly every way – crime rates included – Englewood does not fit the standard definition of a Whole Foods market. And yet the high-end grocer announced this week plans to open a store there in 2016 on the northwest corner of this sparse intersection: