Detroit (Detroit News) - Ownership of Detroit's grocery trade has long been held by a
patchwork of ethnic and immigrant groups, but today it's mostly a
Chaldean-owned business.
Of the 83 full-line grocery stores in
Detroit, Chaldean businesspeople own as many as 75, according to
statistics compiled by the Associated Food & Petroleum Dealers, a
West Bloomfield Township-based trade group.
The remainder are owned by Hispanic, Jewish and African-American families, as well as Aldi and Kmart, according to the group.
"In
the history of our organization, we were once dominated by Jewish
members, then Italians and now Chaldeans," AFPD President Auday Arabo
said.
Chaldean grocers, including the Denha family, began to
dominate the business not only in Detroit, but also in some of its
nearby suburbs as they bought up locations abandoned by chains in the
wake of the 1967 riots, Arabo said.
"Our people (in Iraq) knew
there were jobs and money to be made here, and it was the land of
opportunity," said John Denha, co-owner of Family Foods in Detroit, "so
they took advantage of the chance to build something for themselves,
their families and their community.
"Back home, they were
merchants, selling rice and grain, some lamb and sugar, from booths to
people in their neighborhoods. It's what they knew."
Denha's
father emigrated from Iraq in the mid-1950s and got established in a
cousin's grocery near Second Street and Euclid in Detroit. He then
opened his own store on 12th Street (now Rosa Parks Boulevard) in the
mid-1960s.
After the riots, the Denhas opened a handful of stores,
including shops at Seven Mile and Livernois roads, at Woodward and
Euclid, and at Gratiot and Mt. Elliott near the Faygo plant.
In
addition to a store at a new location on Rosa Parks Boulevard, the
42-year-old Denha and his two brothers run stores under the Foodland
name, and others in Southfield, Waterford Township and Harper Woods.
Sixty
to 70 years ago, Jewish merchants owned the biggest share of the
grocery trade in Detroit, said Arabo, whose organization represents
independent grocers, and convenience-store and gas-station owners across
Michigan and Ohio.
By the 1950s, Italian merchants were the biggest players, and Chaldean entrepreneurs gradually took over from them, he said.
The
Hiller family opened its first store in Detroit in 1941, called
Shopping Center Market, near Michigan Avenue and Central in what then
was a Polish neighborhood.
"It was bustling, filled with all sorts
of immigrants at that time," said Jim Hiller, who now is CEO of
Southfield-based Hiller's markets.
Other Jewish entrepreneurial
families who owned grocery stores at that time, Hiller said, included
the Wolfs, Weissbergs (who owned Chatham stores), Bormans (whose Food
Fair store later became the now-departed Farmer Jack) and Finks (founder
of the now-defunct Great Scott stores).
The Hillers' holdings
expanded at mid-century to three other stores in nearby suburbs, and now
the family-owned chain has seven stores in the western suburbs of
Detroit.
The makeup of the grocery trade in Detroit proper,
especially, is vastly different after the exodus by corporate
supermarket chains. There is even a difference between who owns gas
stations in the city and who owns grocery stores.
While Chaldeans,
who are Catholic by background, have the most Detroit supermarkets,
Muslims mostly own the city's gas stations, Arabo said. It is largely a
reflection of the fact that most smaller stores don't sell liquor, which
is consistent with the commercial tenets of many Muslims, he said.
The
grocery stores in Detroit are owned by "tight-knit communities who
build on inter-generational wealth," Arabo said. "It's by people who
start with small stores. They lend to each other because usually the
banks won't. And it grows from that."
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