Direct delivery to the Bronx

For months, concerned citizens have protested FreshDirect’s move to the Bronx. 

They have argued that the business — which offers customers the opportunity to shop for their groceries online from the comfort of home and have them delivered by diesel-fueled trucks — will only contribute to the high rates of asthma and low overall health rankings already at play in the South Bronx neighborhood where its warehouse will be located. 

They have maintained that $130 million in city subsidies should not have been offered to the company just because it considered a move away from its customer base to New Jersey — especially while the city claims it is financially unable to make good on promises to offset environmental burdens already placed on the Bronx.

Critics have said that Fresh Direct’s location in the path of a would-be South Bronx Greenway stands in the way of years worth of work toward riverfront access that would help offset pollution instead of exascerbate it — as FreshDirect is bound to do. 

But perhaps most symbolic of the company’s apparent lack of concern for the borough it would call home was its policy of declining to deliver to most Bronx neighborhoods. 

Until recently, FreshDirect would only truck groceries to select zip codes that included Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Village. Among those it would not deliver to included most of Kingsbridge — as well as Mott Haven, where its warehouse will be located. 

That is no longer true. 

Residents — who were rightly insulted by this insistence that they suffer the drawbacks of living with the internet grocer without ever having a chance to reap its benefits became outspoken critics. Ironically, they even called for a boycott.

And FreshDirect, at least in this small way, has yielded to the pressure.

Earlier this month, the company announced it would deliver to all of the Bronx and would institute a pilot program that would accept food stamps from some neighborhoods and wave its delivery fee for those customers.

It was the right thing to do. 

FreshDirect should be commended for reversing an exclusive policy that amounted to redlining. 

Clearly, the company has found a way around its assertion — first reported in The Riverdale Press in June 2010 — that traffic flow issues kept it from delivering to certain neighborhoods and that it only delivered in areas that made a significant number of service requests.
Now, it should build on this neighborly gesture and pressure the city to complete the Randall’s Island connector bridge adjacent to its warehouse site, which would give residents access to the island’s parkland and recreational facilities.

It should commit to paying a living wage even though it managed to get approval for its warehouse just before the passage of legislation that would have required it to pay $10 an hour with benefits, $11.50 without. 

It should explore alternative fuel and hybrid options for its trucks and collaborations with local farmers to make the “eat local” logo on its trucks a reality. 

If we Bronxites remain vigilant, the company’s new policy of serving the neighborhood where it will be located will not be the last of its positive changes.