Why We’re Launching the Missing Market Project
Across California, many neighborhoods have lost their grocery stores — and never got them back.
This pattern is not random. It reflects decades of policy decisions, corporate practices, and land-use mechanisms that have quietly shaped where food access exists and where it does not. In many Black communities across the state, the disappearance of grocery infrastructure has become normalized, even though the impact is felt every day.
At Nourish California, our work focuses on removing barriers to food access. Through our Black Food Justice Campaign, we are expanding that work to examine one of the less visible forces shaping food access across the state: restrictive land-use covenants that prevent grocery stores from opening.
This moment marks a new phase in that work.
The Grocery Store Access Act (AB 1857)
This year we are supporting AB 1857 (Aguiar-Curry), the Grocery Store Access Act.
The bill would void and make unenforceable restrictive covenants in property deeds and leases that prohibit grocery stores or supermarkets from opening at a site. These clauses function as private land-use restrictions — often used by large retailers to prevent competitors from opening in locations they previously occupied.
When a grocery store closes and leaves behind one of these restrictions, that site may be blocked from becoming a grocery store again for years or even decades.
The result is a structural barrier to food access that communities often cannot see and have little ability to challenge.
AB 1857 removes that barrier. Just as importantly, it helps shift the conversation. Too often, food deserts are framed as a simple “market failure.” In reality, many of these conditions are shaped by decisions — including private restrictions — that limit where grocery stores are allowed to operate.
What Is a Restrictive Covenant?
A restrictive covenant is a clause written into a property deed or lease that limits how a building can be used.
In the grocery industry, some retailers place covenants on properties they leave behind that block another grocery store from opening there for a certain period of time.
This means that even if a community wants a grocery store — and even if the building is perfect for one — the space may legally be prevented from becoming a grocery store again.
These private restrictions can quietly shape where food access exists, often without communities ever knowing they are there.
AB 1857 would make these grocery-restricting covenants unenforceable in California.
Food Access and the Long Arc of Disinvestment
For many Black communities in California, the loss of grocery infrastructure is tied to a longer history of disinvestment.
In Los Angeles, numerous neighborhoods lost grocery stores in the years following the 1992 uprising. Some stores closed temporarily. Others left permanently. In many places, the grocery access that existed before that moment never returned.
What followed were decades of uneven reinvestment, where some communities saw new development while others were left with fewer and fewer places to purchase affordable groceries.
Across the state, similar patterns exist in neighborhoods shaped by historic redlining, segregation, and economic exclusion.
Food deserts do not appear overnight. They are the result of long-term decisions about where investment should — and should not — occur.
A New Phase for the Black Food Justice Campaign
The Black Food Justice Campaign began as a seed initiative — an effort to explore how structural barriers shape food access in Black communities across California.
What started as an incubation phase has now evolved into a broader campaign. Nourish California is stepping into a lead role while continuing to work in close partnership with community organizations, advocates, and statewide allies.
This approach reflects a simple reality: while the campaign itself is new, the conditions it addresses are not. The disparities shaping food access in Black communities are the result of generations of disinvestment and structural exclusion that continue to shape where grocery stores open, where investment flows, and where communities are left without basic food infrastructure.
Because of that history, this work cannot be built in isolation. Our role is to help connect strategy, elevate community knowledge, and move policy conversations forward alongside partners who have long been navigating these challenges on the ground.
Supporting AB 1857 represents one step in that effort. The bill provides an opportunity to surface a largely hidden structural barrier — restrictive land-use covenants that prevent grocery stores from reopening — while building broader awareness of how land use, market concentration, and historic disinvestment intersect to shape food access today.
Through relationships developed within the California Food and Farming Network (CFFN) and its Regional Food Ecosystem Working Group, we are strengthening partnerships that allow this campaign to grow thoughtfully while laying the groundwork for future policy solutions.
The goal is not only to respond to food insecurity, but to help shift the conditions that produce it.
Introducing the Missing Market Project
To support this work, we are launching the Missing Market Project.
The Missing Market Project is a community research effort designed to document former grocery store sites where food access has not returned.
Across California, there are many locations where a grocery store once existed but never came back. These are what we are calling “missing markets.”
Through partnership with community organizations, this project will:
- Build awareness of structural land-use barriers
- Activate community participation in identifying missing markets
- Strengthen the evidentiary base supporting AB 1857
- Advance broader efforts to dismantle "food deserts."
This work grounds legislative reform in lived experience and community knowledge.
Help Us Map the Missing Markets
We are inviting community members, organizers, and local partners across California to participate.
If you know of a grocery store location that closed and was never replaced, we want to hear about it.
Your input will help document the structural absence of grocery infrastructure in historically divested communities and strengthen the case for policy change.
Explore the resources and get involved:
- Read the AB 1857 Fact Sheet
- View our Support Letter
- Sign onto the Coalition Support Letter
- Submit a location through the Missing Market Project Form
Together, we can bring visibility to the places that have been left out of the conversation for too long.
This Is Just the Beginning
The Missing Market Project is more than a data collection effort. It is a way of naming and documenting the structural conditions that shape food access across California.
By bringing together community knowledge, policy advocacy, and cross-sector collaboration, this work will help lay the foundation for future solutions — from land-use reform to economic development strategies that support grocery reinvestment in historically divested neighborhoods.
The Black Food Justice Seed Campaign is designed to grow over time. AB 1857 and the Missing Market Project represent an early step in building a broader vision where food access, land use, and community well-being are aligned.
We look forward to building that future together.
For questions or partnership opportunities, contact:
Kameron Mims-Jones kameron@nourishca.org
Language Access
We want this work to be accessible to as many communities as possible.
Translations coming soon:
- Spanish
- Korean
- Traditional Chinese
If there are additional languages that would help your community participate in the Missing Market Project, please let us know.
