"Food deserts" are also driven by shoplifting and the fact that store owners can't keep them profitable, even if they're the only store around.

Do you have anything to support that? It seems incredibly unlikely. Food deserts aren't devoid of retail altogether. They're not even devoid of food retail. They just don't have supermarkets. And the sorts of products that supermarkets sell are particularly ill-suited to resale after shoplifting (they tend to be inexpensive, bulky, sometimes perishable, subject to damage if compressed or pushed into something, and fungible commodities). The products that aren't like that are still sold in food deserts, just in different stores. It's hard to see why supermarkets would be susceptible to shoplifting to a materially different (and greater) degree than other stores in a way that it would be a factor in causing these kinds of food deserts.