Relief is coming to food deserts in Youngstown as three brand new Bottom Dollar Food stores will open Thursday in neighborhoods that have been without a full-service grocery store for years.
Employees at the Bottom Dollar store in the Mahoning Plaza at the corner of Meridian Road and Mahoning Avenue are more than ready for the customers.
"The community has accepted us well. They've been coming to the front door filling out free membership cards. The associates are just dynamite," said store manager Larry Scheid.
The associates spent Wednesday not only stocking the shelves, but also filling a huge void in the city. In a 2010 study, several areas in Youngstown were classified as food deserts, which are large geographic regions lacking a full-service grocery store.
That's no longer the case for South Side residents in the Idora neighborhood on Glenwood Avenue, as well as Midlothian Boulevard on the upper South Side and the Mahoning Plaza on the West Side.
"Where the customers are located in proximity to our stores, I think will be a huge value to the Youngstown consumer base," said Leslie Atkinson, director of marketing for Bottom Dollar.
Food deserts also lack fresh produce and meat, which is a problem that also will be fixed by Bottom Dollar.
"The beauty of this cooler is it allows our produce to stay fresher and not be handled quite as much," Atkinson said.
The company hired 100 people to work in the three locations, which has drawn protests from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union local 880. The union said the European-based company is taking business away from local grocers and is not fair to its employees.
"We take into account very seriously the needs of our associates and we just work hard to ensure that we're committed to that," Atkinson said.
The three locations open their doors on Thursday at 8 a.m.
