Based on the results of the 382 surveys we collected, we were able to determine a certain degree of demographic information about the Lincoln Park/West End neighborhood of Duluth. For example, as Figure 18 shows, most of our respondents live in the most densely populated parts of the neighborhood along the Third Street corridor, and we received no responses from residents inhabiting the industrial area along the St. Louis River. Respondents tended to be older than the average Lincoln Park/West End resident (see Figure 19). In addition, our respondents were overwhelmingly female and had slightly higher income and educational achievement than the average Lincoln Park/West End resident (see Figures 19, 20 and 21). Finally, our sample also indicated that 6.5% of respondents use WIC and 17.5% use EBT.
1. Age
- Under 19 0.3%
- 20-24 4.6%
- 25-34 15.2%
- 35-44 13.3%
- 45-54 19.3%
- 55-64 23.4%
- 65-74 14.9%
- 75-84 7.1%
- 85+ 1.9%
2. Gender
- Female 74.0%
- Male 24.7%
3. Race
- White 88.6%
- Black or African American 3.8%
- Native American or Alaskan Native 7.3%
- Asian 0.3%
- Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0.0%
- Other____________________
4. What is the highest level of education you have completed?
- Less than high school 3.7%
- High school 25.4%
- Some college 23.0%
- Vocational/technical 14.7%
- College 24.9%
- Masters degree 7.2%
- Doctorate 1.1%
5. What is the closest intersection to your house?
_________________& ____________________
6. Do you or anyone in your household receive WIC?
- Yes 6.5%
- No 93.5%
7. Do you or anyone in your household receive EBT?
- Yes 17.5%
- No 82.5%
8. Marital Status
- Married 41.0%
- Single 32.5%
- Widower 14.6%
- In a long term relationship 11.9%
9. Household Income
- $0 - $25,000 44.6%
- $25,000 - $50,000 32.6%
- $50,000 - $75,000 15.1%
- $75,000 - $100,000 5.8%
- $100,000 – up 1.8%
10. How many people do you have in your household (including yourself)?
- (average) 2.4
11. How many children under the age of 18 do you have in your household?
- (average) 0.7
Grocery Shopping in Lincoln Park/West End
Although the Lincoln Park/West End does not have a grocery store, neighborhood residents are still able to shop for groceries. They accomplish this by “out-shopping” in a variety of different neighborhoods. Our survey asked respondents where they shop for groceries and asked them to choose from a list of area grocery outlets. Our survey allowed respondents to choose more than one option, so the final numbers do not add up to 100%. As Figure 23 indicates, half of respondents shop at the West Duluth Super One; about one-fifth of respondents shop at Cub Foods in the Miller Hill Mall area; a little more than eight percent shop at the Super One (Mall area), and a little over five percent shop at Lincoln Park/West End convenience stores. Interestingly, almost every shopping outlet in the Twin Ports area was mentioned in our survey, including Whole Foods Co-op, Save-A-Lot in West Duluth, Walmart in Superior, and Sam’s Club in the Mall area. The diversity of different venues that Lincoln Park/West End residents utilize to do their shopping indicates that residents make sophisticated decisions when choosing where to shop for food. They stop for groceries on the way home from work, drive to distant stores for lower prices, and choose to shop at stores that meet specific dietary requirements. Survey results also indicate that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to grocery shopping problems in the Lincoln Park/West Duluth neighborhood because people will continue to shop at the stores that best fulfill their grocery-shopping needs.
Figure 24: Household Income and Store Choice | |||||
Super One (West Duluth) | Cub Foods | Convenience stores (Lincoln Park) | Whole Foods Co-op | Save-A-Lot | |
<$25,000 | 87.6% | 14.5% | 12.4% | 3.4% | 9.0% |
$25,000 - $50,000 | 75.0% | 32.7% | 6.7% | 3.8% | 1.9% |
$50,001 - $75,000 | 60.4% | 52.1% | 2.1% | 14.6% | 4.2% |
$75,001 - $100,000 | 73.7% | 52.6% | 0.0% | 15.8% | 5.3% |
>$100,000 | 50.0% | 16.7% | 0.0% | 33.3% | 0.0% |
Our survey found that the type of grocery stores residents shopped at varied based on income. For example, Figure 24 shows the top six stores that households shop at, sorted by income. Of special note is that while 12.4% of households earning less than $25,000 per year shop at convenience stores in Lincoln Park/West End, none of the households earning more than $75,000 per year shop at those stores. In addition, while 87.6% of households earning less than $25,000 per year shop at the West Duluth Super One, only 50% of households earning more than $100,000 shop at this store. Similarly, while 9% of households earning less than $25,000 per year shopped at the discount grocer Save-A-Lot, no households making over $100,000 per year shopped there. The clearest link between income and shopping is evident with the Whole Foods Co-op numbers, which, according to our survey, draws in a full 33.3% of the richest households in the neighborhood and only 3.4% of the neighborhood’s lowest income group.
12. Where do you usually buy your groceries? Please check all that apply.
- Cub 18.2%
- Super One in West Duluth 50.0%
- Convenience Stores in Lincoln Park 5.3%
- Other (please specify):
o Midtown Grocery 1.2%
o Mount Royal 0.5%
o Sam’s Club 1.9%
o Save-A-Lot 3.4%
o Super One (Mall area) 8.6%
o Super One (Plaza) 0.9%
o Target (mall area) 0.3%
o Walgreens 0.7%
o Walmart (Superior) 2.7%
o Whole Foods Co-op 4.1%
13. How do you usually get to the store to buy groceries?
o Walk 0.5%
o Bike 0.3%
o Bus 3.2%
o Drive 82.1%
o By being driven to the stores 10.7%
o Taxi 2.7%
o Other (please specify) 0.5%
14. How do you usually get home from the store after buying groceries?
o Walk 0.5%
o Bike 0.3%
o Bus 1.6%
o Drive 82.0%
o By being driven to the stores 10.5%
o Taxi 4.6%
o Other (please specify) 0.5%
Fast Food, Dining and Cooking in Lincoln Park/West End
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4+ | |
15. How often per week do you cook food at home for yourself or your family? | 0.3% | 1.4% | 4.1% | 8.9% | 85.4% |
16. How often per week do you order food to be delivered to your home? | 79.0% | 15.3% | 4.1% | 0.3% | 1.4% |
17. How often per week do you eat at sit down restaurants like Pizza Luce or T-Bonz? | 56.3% | 31.3% | 9.4% | 1.6% | 1.3% |
18. How often per week do you eat at fast food restaurants (such as McDonalds or Quiznos)? | 48.4% | 32.3% | 13.3% | 4.3% | 1.6% |
19. How often per week do you buy groceries? | 1.9% | 67.1% | 19.8% | 8.7% | 2.4% |
20. How many vehicles do you have in your household? | 13.9% | 43.6% | 37.2% | 3.5% | 1.9% |
Our survey also found that where residents chose to shop closely related to how many cars were in their household. For example, 29% of those households who had no car shopped at neighborhood convenience stores, while only 7% of the households with at least one car shopped at these stores. Traveling outside of the neighborhood for groceries is a hurdle that all neighborhood residents faced. Our survey found that most residents (82%) relied on cars to travel to the grocery store and the remaining percentages arrived at stores by: getting a ride with someone else (11%); taking a taxi (3%); taking the bus (3%); and walking/biking (1%). In terms of getting home from the grocery store, the picture is very similar, with the exception of changes in taxi and bus usage with only 2% of residents reporting that they take the bus home from the store and a slightly larger 5% take a taxi home.
As Figure 25 shows, city bus routes serve the Lincoln Park/West End neighborhood well. Existing bus lines take residents to grocery stores located in the western and northern areas of Duluth.
Figure 26 plots our survey respondents to city bus routes. Residents living north of 3rd Street and west of bus routes have access to some grocery stores. For example, one bus line takes residents who live near Superior Street or 3rd Street to the West Duluth Super One, and another bus line takes residents who live higher up in the
21. What is the biggest problem you have getting groceries in Lincoln Park?
- Financial difficulty 14.1%
- Getting to the grocery store 4.0%
- Getting home from the grocery store 4.6%
- Local stores have inadequate selection 37.6%
- Other (please specify) 39.8%
Non-traditional Food Sources
While the food deserts literature tends to focus mostly on shopping outlets and fast food/restaurant meals, this survey also tried to capture information about the extent to which Lincoln Park/West End residents eat food from non-traditional sources, such as food shelves, hunting, fishing and gardening. Because each of these sources offers discounted foods, either by residents growing their food themselves or by acquiring it through donations, and are tailored to meet the needs of neighborhood residents, we felt they serve an important, though often overlooked, role in provisioning the community.
The survey found that a significant number of area residents use food shelves to provision their households with 27% of respondents rating the food shelf as being at least “somewhat important” and 10.5% describing it as “very important” to provisioning their households. These numbers increase when we examine only those residents who use EBT, with 74% of Lincoln Park/West End EBT users describing the food shelf as “somewhat important” to their diet. Similarly, while about 20% of residents residing in households without children consider the food shelf an important part of their diet, an astounding 39% of households with children ranked the food shelf as being at least “somewhat important” to their diet.
Lincoln Park/West End residents also use food-buying programs, such as SHARE and Ruby’s Pantry. About 12% of respondents ranked SHARE and 10% described Ruby’s Pantry as being at least “somewhat important” in their efforts to access food. SHARE has one distribution site in West Duluth and Ruby’s Pantry, currently located in the Central Hillside neighborhood, opened a new site in the Morgan Park neighborhood.
In addition, residents also defined other self-provisioning systems, like hunting, fishing, and gardening, as being important to their accessing food. For 25% of respondents, meat from hunting was at least “somewhat important,” while 24% ranked fishing as being “somewhat important” and 48% described gardening as “somewhat important” for provisioning their households.
The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) provides discounted food to families with children whose household income falls below a certain income threshold, defined based on size of household and income sources. About 12% of households in Lincoln Park/West End rank MFIP as “somewhat important” for them when accessing food. If we look only at households with children, we can see that a full 28% of these households ranked MFIP as being at least “somewhat important.” Thus, MFIP plays a vital role in feeding about a quarter of this neighborhood’s households with children.
22. Over the course of the last year, how important have the following food sources been to your diet?
Not Important | Somewhat Important | Very Important | |||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |||
Food shelf (like CHUM or Salvation Army) | 73.2% | 4.1% | 6.1% | 6.1% | 10.5% | ||
SHARE food buying club | 88.5% | 4.4% | 3.6% | 3.0% | 0.6% | ||
Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) | 88.3% | 0.9% | 0.6% | 1.5% | 8.7% | ||
Ruby’s Food Pantry | 90.0% | 4.1% | 1.8% | 2.4% | 1.8% | ||
23. Over the course of the last year, how important have the following food sources been to your diet?
Not Important | Somewhat Important | Very Important | |||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 50 | |||
Meat From hunting | 74.6% | 9.6% | 7.3% | 4.4% | 4.1% | ||
Fish that you caught | 76.3% | 9.9% | 8.2% | 3.8% | 1.8% | ||
Vegetables from a garden | 51.7% | 4.8% | 16.5% | 8.0% | 9.1% | ||
Other________________ | |||||||
24. What would you like to change about food access in Lincoln Park/West End?
-- Please write on the back of the letter or on any other piece of paper you have. Thank You!
