On February 9, 2026, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson stood outside the Sentry Food Store on Lisbon Avenue, flanked by city officials and business owners, to deliver a message that hit home for many residents: the city’s access to fresh, healthy food is shrinking, and leaders are racing to stop the slide. The mayor’s announcement—an ambitious proposal to set aside roughly $1 million to help struggling independent grocers and pharmacies—came as the city faces a troubling wave of grocery store closures. For countless Milwaukeeans, especially those in neighborhoods already teetering on the edge of food insecurity, the news couldn’t be more urgent.
Over the past year, at least seven full-service grocery stores have shuttered across Milwaukee County, according to FOX6 News. The north side has been hit particularly hard, losing three stores in rapid succession. The Sentry Foods location near 64th Street and Silver Spring, which opened just in fall 2023, was meant to be a lifeline for about 12,000 people living within a one-mile radius who previously had no easy access to a full-service grocer. But now, with its own closure looming, residents are left wondering where they’ll turn next for fresh produce, dairy, and other basics.
"Grocery store closures continue to be a problem across the city, and we have been leveraging partnerships in order to stem the current wave of closures," Mayor Johnson explained at the press conference, as reported by FOX6 News. He emphasized that the new grant program he’s working on with members of the Common Council would target equipment needs and eligible start-up inventory for businesses aiming to open or expand grocery or pharmacy operations. The goal, he said, is simple but vital: "Right now the most important thing, I believe, is working to make sure that we keep the doors open."
This isn’t just a business problem—it’s a community crisis. The city’s existing Fresh Food Access Fund, while helpful, mainly supports farmers markets and SNAP initiatives rather than providing direct assistance to brick-and-mortar stores. As a result, local grocers like Navjoot Sandhar, owner of the soon-to-close Sentry Foods, find themselves in a bind. Sandhar recently received a $25,000 grant to update his outdated refrigeration system, but he says the challenges are mounting faster than he can address them. "Just with how old the building is and everything, it is very hard and difficult to maintain our basic expenses," Sandhar told FOX6 News. "I’ve gotten to the point of having enough equipment issues to where, to fix them, I don’t have the income coming in anymore to be able to fix all these issues I’m having because the store is such an old store."
Sandhar’s worries aren’t just about his own livelihood. He’s acutely aware of the broader stakes. "If it’s not for me specifically, for the other grocery stores, to make sure we don’t continue to fall into a food desert that Milwaukee is falling into," he said. Residents like Donald Brown echo that anxiety. "I decided to come to this store because there isn't anywhere to go over there. They closed down all the grocery stores," Brown lamented.
Unfortunately, Milwaukee isn’t alone in facing these challenges. Across the Midwest, families are grappling with food insecurity from multiple angles. In the Twin Cities area, another crisis has unfolded—one that underscores how fragile access to food can be, especially for vulnerable communities. According to The New York Times, the Partnership Academy in Richfield, a suburb of Minneapolis, saw a dramatic drop in student attendance following the launch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s "Operation Metro Surge" around Thanksgiving 2025. The situation escalated after January 7, 2026, when ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, sparking fear throughout the community. More than 60 percent of students at Partnership, a school where over 90 percent of the 533 elementary and middle schoolers are Hispanic, stopped coming to class.
MJ Johnson, the school’s executive director, described the impact: "Once we started to see ICE in our neighborhoods, there was a real blow to our attendance." The school, normally proud of its attendance rates, was forced to switch to fully remote learning as empty desks multiplied. But the loss of in-person instruction wasn’t the only consequence. For many students, school is where they receive free hot breakfasts and lunches—meals that are essential not only for nutrition, but for keeping attendance high and kids ready to learn.
The ripple effects of immigration enforcement actions, as The New York Times highlighted, reach far beyond the immediate families involved. Hunger and food insecurity surge when schools close or when families are too afraid to send their children out. The Partnership Academy’s experience is a stark reminder that food access isn’t just about store locations; it’s interwoven with public policy, community trust, and even law enforcement activities. When those systems falter or collide, the most vulnerable—children, low-income families, and immigrants—often pay the steepest price.
Back in Milwaukee, city leaders are searching for creative solutions. Mayor Johnson suggested that potential funding for the new grant program could come from designated commercial dollars or tax-free legal settlement funds. The hope is to provide a lifeline not just to individual store owners, but to entire neighborhoods at risk of becoming food deserts. The stakes are high: when a grocery store closes, it’s not just the loss of a business—it’s the loss of a vital resource, a gathering place, and a symbol of stability for the community.
Nationally, the struggle to keep grocery stores afloat in underserved areas is nothing new. Many independent grocers operate on razor-thin margins, facing high costs for equipment, inventory, and maintenance. When unexpected expenses—like the need for a new refrigeration system—arise, some simply can’t keep up. Larger chains, too, have pulled out of less profitable neighborhoods, citing economic pressures and shifting consumer habits. The result? More and more communities are left with limited options, often forced to rely on convenience stores or fast food outlets that can’t provide the same variety or quality of fresh foods.
For city officials, the challenge is to balance immediate relief with long-term sustainability. Grants and subsidies can help in the short term, but systemic change may require new business models, stronger public-private partnerships, and policies that make it easier for small grocers to survive. Milwaukee’s efforts to retool its approach—by directly supporting store owners and targeting the root causes of closures—could serve as a model for other cities. But as the events in both Milwaukee and the Twin Cities show, solutions must also account for the broader social and political forces that shape who gets to eat, and how.
As winter deepens in the Midwest, the urgency is palpable. For families in Milwaukee, Richfield, and countless other communities, the question isn’t just where the next meal will come from—it’s whether the places that provide those meals will still be there tomorrow. The answers, as city leaders and residents alike are discovering, may depend on a willingness to invest not just in food, but in the people and places that make healthy communities possible.