A new supermarket has opened in East Oak Cliff, giving renewed life to an area that has been considered a food desert for the past few years.
Food deserts, according to the Department of Agriculture, are geographic areas where nutritious foods, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, are not conveniently available to residents.
The Dallas Express took a trip up to the supermarket, Food Basket, to get a firsthand experience inside the new store and to see how the community felt about the return of a grocery store to the neighborhood.
The Food Basket is located at 3540 Simpson Stuart Road, about three miles east of The University of North Texas Dallas, near Bonnie View Road in East Oak Cliff. The Food Basket sports a variety of fresh produce and all the typical groceries a shopper would need.
The Dallas Express first interviewed Audrey, the Food Basket’s front-end supervisor. “At first glance, I thought it was a food pantry because of the name,” said Audrey. “However, I came in one Sunday after church, and I was like, ‘Oh, is this an actual grocery store?’”
Audrey was hired as the supermarket’s front-end supervisor during the store’s soft opening in January. Since then, Audrey has helped uplift the Food Basket with her positive energy and her enthusiasm to see the store succeed.
“I love the new store,” said Audrey. “It actually feels clean, it smells a lot better, and the products here are recognizable. Some things are off-brand, but it’s mostly name-brand quality stuff,” she said.
According to Audrey, the Food Basket offers higher quality food options than the location’s previous grocery store, Save U More, which shut down in 2020 due to financial difficulties following the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.
After Save U More closed down in 2020, the community was left starving for a replacement grocery store. That is when the City of Dallas stepped in with a $2.8 million investment to build and reopen a grocery store on the property. However, that wasn’t able to become a reality until just recently.
“You do not appreciate a grocery store until you find out you do not have a grocery store in the community,” Councilmember Tennell Atkins told Fox 4 KDFW.
“Having a new store here makes everything easier,” Audrey told The Dallas Express. There are a lot of people that live in this area, and a lot of them don’t have transportation. Many rely on public transit, but when you have a large family at home, and you have to go grocery shopping, transporting all those groceries becomes very challenging.”
The store has been packed ever since the ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to the Food Basket store manager Josh Southers.
“The neighborhood needed a store really bad, so we came to fill that void,” Southers told The Dallas Express.
Southers was brought on as store manager shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday last year. After taking the job and moving down, Southers was surprised to find out exactly how messy the interior of the previous store had become.
“The place was in shambles. Busted pipes, dirty floors, left-out food … It was a mess,” he explained.
“We had a minor hiccup with the bread companies when the ice storm hit last week, which caused us to get a little behind, but pretty much everything else is back to normal now,” he said.
Southers concluded the interview with a call to action, encouraging locals around the area to come and visit the new store.
“We’re open for business! We love to serve Oak Cliff, so come on down and see us,” he said.
