The neighborhood food environment: sources of historical data on retail food stores

Table 1 Government and commercial retail food store data sources

Potential data source	Data available for the 1980s	Dates of operation	How often information is updated	Store name and address	Indicator of scale of operations^b	Some information for classifying food store as supermarket, etc.	Include small grocery stores
GOVERNMENT SOURCES
Local business licensing agencies	Yes^c	Yes	When licenses are renewed	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
State Board of Equalization^d (California)	Yes	Can be derived from multiple renewal records	When permits are renewed	Yes	No	Yes	Only those that carry taxable items ^e
COMMERCIAL SOURCES
Dun & Bradstreet^f	Yes	Yes	Semi-annually	Yes	Yes^g	Yes	Not usually
Trade Dimensions^h	Yes	Yes	Annually or semi-annually	Yes	Yes	Yes	Stores with annual sales volume of <$0.5 m are not usually included
Yellow Pages	Yes	No	Updated only when advertisement contract is renewed	Address sometimes not available	No	Yes	Usually

^aInformation presented here was obtained in 2002–2003 for data relevant to 1979–1990.
^bIndicators of scale of operations included annual sales volume, number of employees, number of cash registers, and store area (square footage).
^cOnly one city agency (Modesto) was able to retrieve data for 1979–1990.
^dThe California State Board of Equalization (SBOE) is responsible for collecting and allocating sales and use taxes from all businesses that sell taxable goods http://www.boe.ca.gov/index.htm, and has records of all retail food stores except those that sell only non-taxable items such as fresh meat, produce and dairy. The data were obtained from Merlin Information Services (Kalispell, MT), a private vendor of national and California-specific public record information.
^eAll stores that sell taxable items are required by law to apply for a permit but compliance is not 100%.
^fDun & Bradstreet (Short Hills, NJ) is an established organization that maintains one of the most comprehensive business information databases in North America.
^gData for chain stores are available only at the corporate level, but not at the store level.
^hTrade Dimensions (Wilton, CT) gathers data on the retail food industry and provides marketing information to organizations such as the Food Marketing Institute and Progressive Grocer.

ISSN: 1479-5868