Ohio isn’t doing so well on the grocery store front — and experts warn it’s leaving millions of residents without easy access to food.
In just the past few months, several long-running supermarkets have announced sudden closures. Among them:
- Fishers Foods in Stark County — a 92-year-old local grocer — shut down its final store on October 14, ending nearly a century of service.
- Apples Market in Lorain is closing this month as well according to store signage and its general manager. That doesn’t help a city that already had food deserts.
- Even Ohio-based Kroger, one of the nation’s biggest grocery chains, this summer confirmed plans to close up to 60 stores nationwide in the next 18 months, citing efficiency concerns. It’s unclear how many of those stores, if any, will be in its home state.
These shutdowns come as food access disappears across large portions of the state.A new 2025 report from the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies (OACAA) found that more than 80% of Ohio counties now have at least one “food desert.” That means entire communities have little or no access to fresh, affordable groceries.
In other words, that’s a whopping 72 of Ohio’s 88 counties!…