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All In Grocers opened six weeks ago in Waterloo, Iowa. It’s a new store with an inviting produce section, a local bakery, and Grandma’s Hands Restaurant, built in an area of a city that had not had one in 50 years. Rodney Anderson is one of the store’s visionaries and developers. I interviewed him on October 30, 2023. [The interview has been edited for better readability and thanks to the Waterloo Courier for many of the photos].
Where does the story of All In Grocers begin?
You go back to the late 1960s, I think it was ‘66 to ‘68, and there was a riot here in Waterloo. And the riot consisted of students at East High, which is predominantly black, wanting the same books and material that kids at West High, predominantly white, had.
So, on this side of town, which is the northeast side of Waterloo, it was basically burned. And you had businesses that never came back and homes that were never rebuilt. We didn't have a grocery store—a place to get fresh fruits and vegetables. I like to say that time stood still in this community for 50 years.
My daughter and I were riding one day down Franklin Street. And she pointed over—at the time, this was an old, abandoned lot. She was like, “Dad, that would be a perfect place for a grocery store.” I said, “No way. No way.” Because I knew it was going to be a challenge. But I didn't know it was going to be a seven-year challenge where we would encounter economic and social racism.
Even though we had our part of the money—the down payments—and our credit was good, we still had those challenges. And we knew that if I and my business partner, Mr. Lance Dunn, couldn’t get it done, no one else was going to try to take this on.
Why a grocery store? I assume there's probably a lot of other things that are missing in the neighborhood as well. Why start with a grocery store?
Why groceries? It's food and everyone needs food. In this area of town, there's only one grocery store while on the west side of town, there are eight options. This directly impacts the neighborhoods—a grocery store is just a main staple you need in a community.
We call All In Grocers “a Community Center that just so happens to sell groceries” because the people coming through that door are people you know from church or school, or they work with you. We named it the Miss Willie Mae Wright Community Center for one of our sheroes in this community. Miss Wright is now 92 years old and has more energy than both of us put together. She's just that kind of person. And as part of the community center, we will do things here such as diabetes awareness or run a reentry program for those formerly incarcerated. Informational things to help the community.
We also want to use the community center here to address issues in housing—to teach people about how you can buy a house. We want to figure out how we can get together and partner to get land and put affordable housing here—like with a group like Habitat for Humanity.
Obviously, the struggles didn't end when you opened the door. What are the current struggles?
Our current struggle is to get our operations correct. We're not a chain store, so we're doing a lot of things on the fly and learning. But we have our own experience in business to fall back on. I've been in development for 30 years, and I love it. My mentor challenged me each year to do something different for the community. We took down an old, big storage building right down the road that people were using to sell drugs in, and built a mall. Now there is a Mexican restaurant and bakery, and a beauty supply shop. Down the street here, less than another half a block, we also just bought a duplex that is old and dilapidated. We're going to take that down and make a four to six-plex for housing. We are continuing to improve our neighborhood.
You talked about economic and systemic racism in this project--tell me about those experiences.
Within Waterloo and Cedar Falls there was not one bank involved in this whole deal. Not one.
The only bank in Iowa that put in actual money, that directly loaned it to us, is from Denver, Iowa called Denver Savings Bank. They are a small bank, but they were just amazed at what were we doing. All of the rest of our financing came outside of Iowa, from North Carolina, from Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, and from Virginia. That tells you a lot.
But you obviously have all these other projects going on too?
Correct. We have good credit. It's location, location, location. What we found out was, the location was great for this community, with the All In Grocers and the mall, which is called Franklin Street Mall. You would think that the bankers, with the experience of living in these towns, would get to know their city. But nothing like that happened.
One person said, well, we did loan to All In Grocers. No, they didn't. They loaned or donated to a nonprofit and the nonprofit in return loaned us the money. So now they're making money on the nonprofit and their risk is down because the nonprofit will pay them if something goes south here. That’s not the same thing as lending us money.
What would you say to those banks?
Get to know the people inside these communities. Get to know the needs of the people, the pulse of the people. It's one thing to tell people, hey, sign up and get yourself a bank account here. But to be a part of the community is very different. They could teach about financial literacy. And then start loaning to people on this side of town or make gifts on this side of town to build houses and build other services that are needed. This is an underserved and underbanked area.
Have you seen any impacts from the store yet?
This grocery store has been open for only one month. But we saw the impact before we even opened the door because we created jobs. At first, it was the guys and ladies who were building the center, those running the big bulldozers and all the machinery. Now we have 55 people on staff. So we've definitely had an impact.
Was that difficult? I hear everywhere that people are having a hard time hiring.
We had a hard time telling people no, or calling people saying, ‘Hey, we're going to put you on our waiting list for a job here.’ I think it was the kind of job everybody looking for and they just poured in, ready to work.
How are sales thus far?
Sales are good. We just got approved for our EBT [SNAP benefits] last Friday. So, our sales have been good without EBT. It's going to pick up 35 and 40 percent with EBT.
Are you able to track, I guess, visually, who's coming in to shop? When I walked in, I saw a lot of White people.
Yes. The White community is using it too because some of these folks live in the community—that's where I think the bankers got it wrong. They were thinking that this community was just Black people. No, we have Chinese, Mexican, every Latinx group. We have everyone here. So yeah, all the communities definitely use it. And it's going to be even better. We've only been open for a month tomorrow. So the familiarity and the shopping flow are going to just get better.
My mom and dad both are deceased, but they always said, I'm going to leave you two things. Your name, and your character. The name and the character of All In Grocers is to be a part of this community.
What do you find are the biggest successes thus far?
Seeing people's faces light up when things new happen.
You know, at first people saw the old building and they thought, ‘oh my goodness, that's an eye sore!’ And then they see it now and it's like, ‘wow, that looks like it should be on the west side of town.’ So we have to change the mentality of thinking that you can't see nice things in a predominantly black and brown community.
That's the mindset that we're looking for, but it's just going to take time. I have a lot of my white brothers and sisters behind me, supporting me. They invested in this community too.
What are your hopes and dreams for what this place can do?
My hope is that people continue to support the grocery. And that we can also bring in local products. The young woman who runs our restaurant Grandma’s Hands, she is a local chef and came out of retirement to move to Waterloo to do all of Grandma's Hands. The young lady in the bakery department baked her own cakes and she can do all these things. So we want them to bring their products in too, so the community can support them too.
But my real dream is to have someone else do something like this, but better. Because we need services, like grocery stores. But we need shoe stores and other businesses. And I want someone to come up with a farming system where we can farm year-round in greenhouses and have even better vegetables than our already great produce section. I also want to buy straight from farmers, and take their products straight to those shelves over there. I've reached out to a couple of people.
That's one thing I told the architect when he was doing this design. I told him I wanted to walk into the store and feel like I'm not on the side of town with a median income is $25-40,000. I want to see it like it's $800, 000 plus, with great produce and a bakery.
Is the produce selling like other products?
Yes. Produce is selling. You know, people are very thankful because the first thing, we don't have a small produce section. Normally a lot of folks are underbanked, underserved people in these areas, and they rely on gas stations. So when they go to the gas station, they only can get horrible food, nothing healthy. Now they can.
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What an exciting story! Living in Cedar Rapids I’m seeing more revitalization in lower income areas, and while we have some Black and other minority owned businesses in the city, there is still stigma about our lowest income communities.
There is a small Hy-Vee shouldering the Moundview and lower section of the Wellington Heights neighborhoods. It’s close to Coe College as well. It sits on First Avenue NE and is a remodel of the store that has historically been on that site, as opposed to the other tear-downs that are Hy-Vee superstores. It does carry a reasonable variety of food and health supplies. But if the price
It’s locally referred to as the “Ghetto Hy-Vee,” a term which infuriates me. Anytime I’ve heard other people like myself, who are White, I give them a scolding.
“This Hy-Vee is someone’s neighborhood store! This is not a ghetto! Please refer to it as the First Avenue Hy-Vee.” I go on that families shop here. All kinds of people shop here! By the time I’m done with them I think they’re changed. I hope so. Nobody should ever have their neighborhood referred to with such profanity.
I’m so happy to hear about the positive changes you are making in East Waterloo. I wish you the greatest success and look forward to updates!
Very important coverage. Am forwarding to a local banker who does invest in the community….