To the Editor:

I will miss working the deli counter at Pierce’s Northside Market. A small group of loyal, mainly low-income, customers propped up the store over the past decade. We shopped at Pierce’s simply because it was our neighborhood store. The new Willy Street should welcome those loyal customers by lowering prices.

This will be challenging for the new occupants of Sherman Plaza because of the way they are used to operating and general industry trends. Even smaller supermarkets, like Pierce’s and Willy Street, require millions of dollars in credit to operate. It is hard for any neighborhood grocer to keep costs down in an industry dominated by automobiles and credit.

Willy Street will have to raise $1.5 million in capital to pay big distributors to truck food in from across the continent. Dave and Don Bruns, the owners of Sherman Plaza, will receive a quarter of a million dollar loan from the city for parking lot improvements. We need lower prices, not remodeling, not construction, not marketing, but lower prices.

We need a store that works like the Northside Farmers Market, not a business. We need local products that don’t travel so far and drive up costs. We need a local store where neighbors come together after church and before the game to catch up. We need a store that welcomes all Northsiders with lower prices, like the farmers markets do by doubling the dollars of shoppers with food stamps.

Those shoppers with more money may have to spend more to balance the books, unless we want the new Northside grocery store to be another Whole Foods that sells products too expensive for we loyal customers who have consistently gotten our groceries on the Northside.

Jackson Foote