Many of New York City’s grocery stores are struggling, but the reason why depends on which neighborhood you’re in.
“In rich neighborhoods like the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, supermarkets now stand mostly empty after initially getting cleaned out by their panic-stricken clientele,” Lisa Fickenscher wrote for The New York Post. “That’s because the well-heeled locals have since hightailed it out of town to wait out the pandemic in roomier digs in the Hamptons or the Berkshires, grocers say.”
Some wealthy people are even hiring limo services to deliver mail to their Hamptons residences after having fled their urban homes. But it’s not just the Hamptons and the Berkshires seeing a flood of upper-crust visitors. The vacation communities of Nantucket and Cape Cod in Massachusetts have seen an influx of city-dwellers coming to town to self-isolate in a more secluded location.
This exodus is forcing some high-end grocers to adapt, according to the Post.
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Avi Kaner, owner of the Morton Williams grocery chain, told the Post that all of his stores were “inundated” with customers three weeks ago. Now, he’s had to start transferring products from his Upper East Side locations to stores in less affluent neighborhoods.
A Whole Foods on Third Avenue and 88th Street shuttered its butcher department over the weekend, according to the Post. Upper East Side resident Andrew Schnipper told the Post that his building is currently half-empty, and that when he walks his dog at night, “there is nothing but darkness when I look up at the buildings.”
The median household income on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is $133,853, about 116% higher than the citywide median of $62,040, according to NYU’s Furman Center.
In lower-income areas, the grocery stores are seeing a lull in business for a very different reason.
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“A lot of my customers in the Bronx have lost their jobs or are on food stamps,” John Estevez, who owns 10 Foodtown locations in the New York metro area, told The Post. “… Those customers spent their [government subsidies] during the rush last month and now they have to wait for their next benefit check.” In the Bronx, the median household income is $33,495.
Across the US, the number of people filing for unemployment benefits has hit a historic high amid the pandemic. A record 6.6 million people applied for benefits for the week ending March 28. In New York City, most novel coronavirus cases are clustered in low-income communities of color, data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows.
“I cannot be more blunt: this disease is affecting people disproportionately in lower-income communities, in communities that have had more health problems historically, and in communities of color,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press briefing on Tuesday, according to The New York Daily News.
How the wealthy are weathering the pandemic differently
The grocery store is yet another sign of how the country’s wealthy are dealing with the pandemic differently than ordinary Americans.
Some billionaires, such as entertainment mogul David Geffen, are avoiding crowds by self-isolating on superyachts. Other wealthy urbanites are even booking out entire hotels in secluded areas to wait out the pandemic, as Business Insider’s Dominic Madori-Davis recently reported.
And some celebrities and wealthy individuals have appeared to have easier access to tests for the novel coronavirus than most Americans, likely because they’re hiring concierge doctors, Taylor Nicole Rogers reported for Business Insider.
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While affluent New Yorkers have fled to their second homes in ritzy vacation destinations like the Hamptons, Nantucket, and Cape Cod, their presence may put pressure on small-town medical facilities. In Nantucket, for example, a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts, there’s only one hospital with 14 beds, three ventilators, and a shortage of doctors.
Grocery store employees, meanwhile, who are typically low-wage, have been deemed essential workers during the pandemic. Many have expressed fear about coming to work during the coronavirus outbreak, as Business Insider’s Courtney Biggs reported. Some say they don’t have access to protective masks and that customers often aren’t respecting social distancing rules. At least four grocery store workers in the US have died of the coronavirus.