Jill Schramm/MDN Applied Research students are, from left, front, Preston Centeno and Zeth Nastal; back, Cael Lorenz, Maggie Machado, Berkeley Lundeen and Sydni Gartner.

It’s been a while since downtown Minot had a grocery store, and students in a Minot State University marketing class are curious about what it might take to bring one back.

The applied research class is close to completing its data gathering and is preparing to begin analysis on the feasibility and sustainability of solutions to address the food desert in downtown Minot.

“We’re really just seeing if it’s feasible to have a grocery store in downtown Minot, or if the Minot community even finds a need for it or wants it,” student Berkley Lundeen said.

To assess the need, the class created an online community survey that will remain open until March 31 at https://forms.office.com/r/dU581YsaMn.

“We’re getting a lot of good responses. We’re seeing a lot of need from the community and people saying that they’ll support it. It’s really nice to see that. And we have over 400 responses on the survey,” Lundeen said Tuesday.

However, the class would like more responses, particularly from those who live and work in downtown Minot.

“We only have 53 people in the actual downtown community who have answered the survey and we need to get that number to at least 100,” Lundeen said.

The estimated four minute survey asks about demographics, the segment in Minot in which respondents live, grocery shopping preferences, transportation access and other information needed for the analysis.

“We also have some questions on the surveys that are kind of pointed toward that feasibility side. Like, ‘How many times do you go grocery shopping a month?’ Or, ‘How much do you spend?’ to kind of see what our break even ratio would need to be if we want to have a storefront,” student Cael Lorenz said.

The class will be investigating the level of sales needed to make a grocery profitable and is looking into specific buildings downtown. The former Firestone Building is the primary building being used in the study, but other buildings are expected to be examined as well.

The class also plans to get the thoughts of a local food producer. The class has been considering different ideas for the grocery store, including a convenience grocery, small grocery market or shelf space for local growers.

Student Sydni Gartner said it took about two weeks to define the project, and each two weeks the class looks at another phase of the research process.

“We won’t finish all of our research on the entire project by the end of the semester, but we’ll get a decent amount done,” she said. “We’ll have the data collection part and then be able to kind of look at numbers and start the process of deciding which building would be best for it.”

Dr. Andrew Bertsch, the MSU professor who is supervising the research, said the Small Business Development Corp. coincidentally is benchmarking revenue for grocery stores, such as needed revenue per square foot and the square footage needed to service certain population sizes.

“So, we will have some benchmarking data that will feed into a business plan. We’ve got a couple of Realtors that are also looking at rental rates for downtown Minot, and an insurance agent that’s going to give us a recommendation on liability insurance and spoilage insurance if there’s any produce that could potentially spoil. So, we’ll have the skeleton of a business plan ready when they present in May,” Bertsch said.

Students will present their study results during the academic showcase at the MSU Showcase of Business May 1. Their hope is to interest potential investors in taking the next step.

“I think we could all agree that this is a little bit more than just a grade to us,” student Preston Centeno said. “This could have a pretty genuine lasting impact on the community.”