Does opening a supermarket in a food desert change the food environment?

Improving access to healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods is a national priority. Our study evaluated the impact of opening a supermarket in a ‘food desert’ on healthy food access, availability and prices in the local food environment. We conducted 30 comprehensive in-store audits collecting information on healthy and unhealthy food availability, food prices and store environment, as well as 746 household surveys in two low-income neighborhoods before and after one of the two neighborhoods received a new supermarket. We found positive and negative changes in food availability, and an even greater influence on food prices in neighborhood stores. The supermarket opening in a ‘food desert’ caused little improvement in net availability of healthy foods, challenging the underpinnings of policies such as the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. •Our study evaluated the impact of opening a supermarket in a ‘food desert’ designed to reduce inequities in healthy food access.•While the supermarket opening resulted in significant improvements in geographic access to a supermarket for intervention neighborhood residents, we did not see a reduction of similar magnitude in distance to regular place of food shopping.•Contrary to expectation, the introduction of a supermarket did not result in healthy food availability more than is likely to have happened naturally, in the absence of government intervention.•The new supermarket may have also inhibited increases in availability in other intervention neighborhood stores, relative to the control neighborhood – with a larger decline in fruit and vegetable availability than junk food availability.•When looking at changes in food price in the intervention neighborhood, we saw a decrease in staple prices but a sharp increase in junk food prices.•Findings suggest that local food system responses to environmental change are complex and dynamic and careful description of local environmental changes related to diet as a result of supermarket interventions is therefore needed in any future study.