Being a bit disingenuous about that map aren’t you? Let’s look at it a bit closer. I found your map here. Yea, there are a lot of stores in high population areas. I don’t know of a lot of people who want to tour there. Out in the hinterlands, like along the Mississippi, the density of “grocery stores” falls off quite a bit as is shown in the red outline. Also look at the green line along the Mississippi from Minneapolis to La Crosse which is part of the MRT. There aren’t a lot of anything in that 188 miles. I also did the 136 miles from La Crosse to Dubuque. That’s close to your 300 miles with very little in terms of grocery stores along the way.



Your point is ever weaker when you look at the legend. These don’t appear to be “grocery stores”. The map is a map of all stores that have some kind of food, i.e. mostly convenience stores. Not the same as a “grocery store”. Only one of the 10 store listed in the legend could be called a “grocery store”.



The same site lists the type of “grocery store” in the map. The vast majority of the business listed are convenience stores which aren’t really known for their selection of true “groceries”. The chart is a bit weird and I’m not sure why they have broken it up the way they have but if we just consider the types of stores to around 2/3 of the circle, there are about 3200 stores listed. Of those 2400 are convenience stores and about 800 are actual grocery/supermarkets. That’s about 75% convenience stores and 25% grocery stores. And, as the initial map shows, those stores aren’t evenly distributed across the state.


This site doesn’t include convenience stores and they say there are 2060 grocery stores mostly concentrated in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay which account for about 900 of the total.