Figure 3.

Barriers to local retail food store access among food-insecure emerging adults. Themes and examples of quotes from participants in the COVID-19 Eating and Activity over Time interview study from July to October 2020.

Theme (subthemes)	Example quote (participant characteristics)
COVID-19 safety practices (lack of store capacity limits, poor adherence to recommendations for wearing masks, and limited enforcement of physical distancing)	For the most part most of the stores don’t let you come in without a mask. But I’ve seen people who, as soon as they walk in, they just take it [their mask] off. And as soon as they’re going to pay, they put it back on. (Not a parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, no household receipt of SNAPa/WICb) Just the overcrowding in the stores and some people don’t really care to follow the rules, so it’s, I guess, it’s other people that make it harder . . . Maybe having some workers actually keeping people to follow the rules. For example, the stickers on the ground that’s basically showing you, “This is six feet apart.” Maybe keeping buyers in check, I guess. (Parent, Hispanic, food sufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) I wish there was more signs that showed an image of how a face mask is supposed to be worn because especially when I would go to Target, Walmart, there’s a lot of people that are just wearing them under their nose and it’s really frustrating because I don’t feel brave enough to say, “Oh, you’re not wearing it right,” or just addressing it . . . I think that’s the job of the employees or the establishment. (Not a parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) I asked a woman, she came and she did not wear a mask and she stood right behind me and I asked her politely if she can step six feet back from me and my kids. And she got really upset and she started throwing some racial slurs at me. So that was really hard for me. And the cashier didn’t say anything. . . . I like that they have on the floor . . . they’ll tell you which aisle to go in and they try to keep you one way and try to not have a vigilant clash together, but not all the customers listen to this. (Parent, Asian, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits)
Lack of physical safety	I have personally had an issue where I was almost robbed at gunpoint and I don’t know, Minneapolis is not really as safe. (Not a parent, White, food sufficient, household receipt of SNAP/WIC benefits) There was security at the store before it was burnt down [during the May 2020 racial justice uprisings], but they were always on their phones, not paying attention to anything. (Not a parent, White, food insufficient, no household receipt of SNAP/WIC)
Discrimination in food retail stores	So I’ve had people spit on me. I’ve had people yell racial slurs, call me the B word, call me all sorts of words from A to Z, and just tell me to go back to where I came from . . . now my kids are scared about these people who they don’t know is attacking us . . . And so I have to wait to find somebody to come, like a sibling or have [my partner] come and watch the kids while I run to the store or Merkel soup store, and just try to get what we can. (Parent, Asian, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) Like my whole life, just being a Latina around the community, how people see you, they just judge you by the outlook. They don’t know about like if you know how to speak Spanish or not, you know the rules, they just look at [you] like, “Oh, they don’t know anything.” And that look that they . . . they don’t say . . . I know they don’t say anything, but that look that they give you is just so uncomfortable that sometimes I end up like not wanting to go to the store because of the same thing. (Parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) I don’t know, usually if me and my mom were to go into ALDIs or something like that by our house there’s a security guard, he follows us around like we’re going to steal something, even when I’m with my daughter he would follow us around and he would just be watching us. (Parent, Hispanic, food sufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits)
Store hours and closures	I work 40 hours at a desk job and I’m a full-time student on top of that. Really the time that I can go shopping, those late hours at night that even now Walmart still isn’t open half the time after I’m done for the day with homework and work and school. (Not a parent, White, food sufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) I think maybe here in my community, just building up the stores back again, because they got burned down and destroyed, maybe that will help a lot . . . In terms of like the local little stores that we have, they open late or they close out really early. I’ve noticed that since everything happened from George Floyd. They used to close them . . . some of them used to close at 8:00 pm, or 9:00 pm the latest. Now they’re closing at 6:00 pm when such as I end up going at like the last minute, like the last five minutes. (Parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) A couple of the stores are burned down around my neighborhood, so that kind of was a hard problem because there was no food stores around, so I’d have to go and drive, not that far, but into [city name] or something to go get groceries, or to [city name], because that’s where the stores would be. If I didn’t have a car, I don’t know what I would be doing. (Parent, Hispanic, food sufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits)
Limited food availability	It’s really hard, like if we end up going to the store to buy the things that we need, because the store doesn’t have it, or just commuting to one store or to another . . . it’s because every time that we go out there isn’t enough food on the shelves. (Parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) It’s mostly fruits . . . I’ve noticed that there is not a lot of fruit where I usually go and do my groceries, or the kind of meat that we want to buy. We usually eat more chicken, but sometimes I want to eat like steak, because for a prepared meal, but it’s really hard to find something like that. Or if it is, it’s just limited, or if there’s meat, it’s so expensive. I’ve noticed that the price went up a lot. (Parent, Hispanic, food insufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits) The thing is that my dad . . . He is on EBTc. So, it was definitely really interesting to just see how that all played out, because he’s allotted a certain amount of money each month, but then the things that he wanted to buy weren’t available. So, I would say that was our biggest challenge, just not knowing where to find the ingredients we wanted or needed and having to resort to other foods I guess. (Not a parent, Asian, food sufficient, household received SNAP/WIC benefits)

^aSNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

^bWIC = Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

^cEBT = electronic benefit transfer.