Inflation Hits Bronx Grocery Stores Hard

Baba Danbako is used to adapting to difficult circumstances.

In 2008, he graduated from community college in Reading, Pennsylvania, just as the stock market was crashing. Though he had moved to the U.S. from his home in Ghat, Libya, with plans to become a professor, he struggled to find a job, and worked first as a long distance trucker and later as a wholesaler providing freshly-slaughtered beef to West African markets in the Bronx. Tired of the long days on the road and badgering vendors for payment, he opened the Danbako Halal Meat Market in Morrisania in 2015. 

Now, his latest challenge is inflation. After reaching a two-year low in June, inflation started accelerating nationally in July. The Consumer Price Index reported that the food index rose 0.2 points per cent in August, the third most-affected category after energy and housing. 

Though the CPI reported that inflation began in July, Danbako started to notice the effects earlier in the summer. Eid Ul Adha is a feast of sacrifice in Islam, which took place in June this year. Eid is always a busy time for Danbako, but this year the price was too much for some of his usual customers.

Danboko said accelerating rates of inflation have affected all of his products, not just the meat. A box of okra, wholesale, used to cost him $30.00. “Today okra is fifty dollars a box,” he said.  I have to sell it, so I have to increase the price.” His customers are not happy to suddenly be paying more for the same product. “Then they go crazy. They say, ‘What! Why!? Why!?’ I try to explain it to them but they don’t hear it.”

Every aspect of production affects prices in Danbako’s store. He purchases live animals at auctions out of state, has them inspected and then brought to a Halal butcher shop in New Jersey. The cost of the meat itself has doubled, from about $0.75 to $1.50 a pound, wholesale. He used to pay $40.00 to have a steer butchered, and now he pays $340.00. Rising gas prices affect the cost of transporting the meat at every stage in its journey, from the farm to the display case. 

Danbako’s customers are mostly West African immigrants and some Caribbean Bronx residents. He provides certain cuts and types of meats that his customers might have a hard time finding at chain grocery stores. Among other things, Danbako Halal Meat Market offers snails, goat, whole lamb’s head, cow tongue, lungs, hoof, and oxtail. From 169th street to 184th street along Boston road, there are a handful of other African grocery stores with which Danbako has found himself in competition. “They (customers) will leave you for twenty cents to the next store," said Danbako.

Danbako’s market is a small business, but nearby chain grocery stores share the same customer base, and they are noticing a difference in customer purchasing habits as well. Danny Espinal has managed Food Universe on Louis Niñé boulevard for eleven years. “Ten years ago, with a hundred dollar purchase you would walk out with ten bags” he said. “Now you walk out with like two bags.” Most of the customers at Food Universe use EBT, or Food Stamps, too. His customers buy what they can within a monthly budget. “EBT is not giving you more monthly,” he said.  “They are giving you the same amount for the past ten years.”

Outside the store, Crotona Park East resident Ophelia Riviera shared that she does not do much of her shopping at Food Universe anymore because of how much their prices have increased. “The money is not stretching,” she said.  Instead, she gets on the train and heads to a Trader Joe’s in Manhattan, to enjoy their cheaper prices.“This is the worst, ever (inflation) I have experienced in my life,” she said.  “Chicken used to be the cheapest. Now you can’t even look at that.Soda is not on the shopping list anymore either.”

According to data from Feeding America, 16.4% of Bronx residents are food insecure, while the national average is 11.5%. Baba Danbako hosts a free bar-b-que outside of his storefront for his neighbors every few months. When asked what his favorite dish is, the surprising answer is, nothing. “I'm not a foodie.” Actually, he doesn’t eat meat at all, as it upsets his stomach. “That doesn’t matter, other people need food, need to eat. It’s not for me.”