Putting Inner Cities To Work

by Manjari Raman, Vice President, Initiative for a Competitive Inner City

An employee prepares lunch at City Fresh Foods in Dorchester, Mass., where open-book management is key.

For Boston-based City Fresh Foods, setting up shop in the inner city wasn’t a compulsion – it was a necessity. The company was founded in 1994 by three young entrepreneurs who came up with a unique business idea: They would offer fresh, home-style ethnic foods to homebound senior populations. At the core of the business plan was the strategy to tap local culinary talent to develop Latin, Caribbean and Russian menus.

In 10 years, City Fresh Foods grew from a 1,000-square-foot store in the economically challenged Four Corners neighborhood in Dorchester,Massachusetts, to a nationally recognized food service company that produces more than 4,000 meals a day for homebound elders, students and privatecatered customers.

City Fresh Foods isn’t just a thriving inner city business today – it’s a business that has grown by leaps and bounds by capitalizing on one of the biggest competitive advantages of America’s inner cities: a large, diverse and available workforce. City Fresh Foods’ co-founder and CEO Glynn Lloyd is the first to admit that he could not have done it without his staff and managers, all of whom are hired locally and among them represent more than seven countries – on a typical day, the City Fresh Foods facility in Dorchester is abuzz with chatter in Haitian, Cape Verdean, Spanish, Portuguese and English.

The changing face of America

America’s inner cities are a window to the future. They are home to the largest labor pool in the country, and more importantly, they represent a microcosm of the emerging multi-lingual, multi-racial composition of America’s 21st century workforce. Census 2000 illustrated the changing demographic profile of the country.While white non- Hispanics are expected to comprise 64.3 percent of the population by 2020 – down from 80 percent in 1980 – African- Americans, Asians and Hispanics will see their numbers burgeon. By the end of the next 15 years, African-Americans are expected to comprise 12.9 percent of the population, up from 11.5 percent in 1980; Asians will constitute 6.5 percent of the population, versus 1.6 percent in 1980; and Hispanics will be 16 percent of the population, up from 9 percent in 1990.

Inner cities already reflect these racial reconfigurations. The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City’s (ICIC) State of the Inner City Economies research shows that in 2000, 82 percent of the population in inner cities consisted of minorities, in contrast to 31 percent across the U.S. Of these, 41 percent were African-American, 33 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian-Pacific. Immigration also contributes significantly to the higher multi-ethnic mix of inner cities: One fourth of inner city residents are foreign-born, compared to one tenth nationwide.

America’s emerging demography has significant implications for labor markets. In the 1990s, as the American economy reached full employment, it raised the very real specter of a labor shortage. Employers were pressed to tap new pools of workers, including people with disabilities, women working at home and the recently retired. Rising wages coupled with the growth of globalization led to outsourcing the manufacture of products and services to labor markets outside the United States. In the process, the underutilized and underemployed population at the very heart of America’s urban core was overlooked.

» Page 2 of 4