Daniel Marquina, 25, recently immigrated to Indianapolis from Honduras. One of the first things that surprised him was how difficult it was to get to a grocery store.
Back home, he could always count on small stores dotting every other street, ready to provide locals with essential products.
“It’s much more useful that way,” Marquina said in an interview conducted in Spanish. “You can still get your supplies when larger stores are closed.”
Now Marquina is like thousands of others living in the Near Westside and West Indianapolis neighborhoods, where buying healthy food can be a bit complicated.
The nearest major grocery store, a Kroger, is 2.7 miles away. That’s a quick 7-minute drive or a 1-hour walk.
Much of the area is considered a food desert, where residents have limited access to healthy and affordable food and where a significant part of the population lives more than a mile from a grocery store. Food deserts tend to be in areas with high poverty rates and higher concentrations of minority populations, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But one man has been trying to change that with the gradual expansion of his grocery offerings.
Paul Kumar, 29, recently invested nearly $1 million to open a grocery store called SuperJams Neighborhood Supermarket in the heart of a food desert on the west side.
Kumar, like Marquina, is an immigrant accustomed to having much easier access to groceries. He is originally from India and lived in Spain with his family before coming to the U.S. at the age of 17.
“People over there are used to walking to stores and not always driving there,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t we bring that here?’”
A desperate need
About a fifth of Indianapolis residents, totaling more than 200,000 people, live in a food desert. And according to a pre-pandemic study, even though more major grocery stores have been opening in Indianapolis, the number of people in food deserts is not decreasing.
Lisa Laflin, executive director of West Indianapolis Development Corp., said she has tried to persuade major companies like Walmart and Aldi to build grocery stores in West Indianapolis.
The companies declined, she said, citing location and area income levels.
On average, a West Indianapolis household makes about $35,500 yearly, and about 35% of households live below the poverty line, making less than $30,000 a year for a family of four. The Near Westside neighborhoods, made up of the Haughville, Hawthorne and Stringtown neighborhoods, make about $31,800 yearly and about 31% of households live below the poverty line.
“Everybody wants a grocery store,” Laflin said. “That’s the very first thing out of anybody’s mouth when we talk about what we need in this community. It’s a grocery store. But, the bottom line is we don’t have deep enough pockets in this community to support a grocery store.”
Kumar disagrees. He carries more than a decade of experience running businesses on the west side. Kumar apprenticed under convenience store owners for several years before becoming their business partner.
He saved up enough money to open his own convenience store on West Washington Street in 2021 called Jams.
He expanded two years later by opening the SuperJams at 401 S. Warman Ave. The store offers staples like dairy, produce, meat and an array of Latin American products.
Kumar said he initially was not interested in investing in the area but saw an opportunity when he heard what the neighborhood was like in the past. Decades earlier, the SuperJams building had been home to several businesses, including previous attempts at a grocery store and a nightclub.
“I know a lot of people in this area,” Kumar said. “Customers that come to my gas station kept asking me to actually buy the store and open it.”
Investing where the people are
The cracked facade and broken windows of the building initially repulsed Kumar.
“When we saw that building, I wasn’t going to invest, to be honest,” Kumar said. “I was like, ‘Oh, man, this street is not busy at all. If we invest here, probably our money goes down the drain. The traffic flow is not optimal.’”
But he kept hearing about the location from customers. The sustained interest made him believe there was enough potential business to at least recoup his investment.
Kumar decided to try. He initially stocked SuperJams with a few essentials, but grew his inventory as customers asked him to add more items.
“We didn’t start with a whole lot of stuff, just what you’ll find in a basic American household and a basic Mexican household,” Kumar said. “Then extra stuff came along as the customers kept demanding it.”
SuperJams’ variety and accessibility is a little taste of home for customers like Marquina. The store is a short walk away. It even stocks the ingredients needed for one of his favorite dishes from back home: tostones.
“Having a store like this makes shopping much easier,” Marquina said. “It’s open 24/7, and you can get to the store to handle little emergencies. You can get what you need at any hour without having to figure out how you’re going to get to the Kroger.”
Kumar said SuperJams has been so successful, he plans to open a new store every six months.
He aims to open his next store, SuperJams 2, at the site of a former pawn shop on West 16th Street. The store is expected to open by the beginning of summer.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @heyEnriqueSaenz
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