The Downtown Grocery Store Myth

Perhaps the most common meme about residents of downtown Tacoma is that we are desperate for a grocery store. When people find out I live downtown, one of the first questions is usually, “What do you do when you want groceries?”

Um … forage? Really, people. I go to the grocery store like you do.

I understand that one of the perceived benefits of living in an urban setting is walking to the grocery store. But really, most people who move to downtown Tacoma are still going to want to drive to the store once a week and pick up a trunk-full of groceries rather than swinging by the store on foot every night.

Now if there were a grocery store right across the street, I would certainly go over daily or every other day. But any farther away and I’d just prefer to drive rather than haul bags of groceries home all the time.

So I’d like to suggest that there is something that would be better for downtown than a new grocery store: a slew of convenience stores.

Some people see the loitering that happens outside the convenience store on 9th and Commerce and probably cringe to think about bringing in more.

But I lived next door to the C&K Market (the convenience store next to the Bostwick) for a year or so and found it incredibly … convenient. I got a bag of chips if I needed a snack, a six-pack if I had a few friends drop by unexpectedly for a Seahawks game. I even picked up an onion there when I was trying to make pad thai and came up short.

Scattering convenience stores that stay open into the evening (like the C&K market) around downtown would be much better for downtown residents than a full blown grocery store, which would only be accessible on foot for a small percentage of the urban dwellers.

Sure, it would be great. But I could really get behind a lot of convenience stores first.