Why not drive the food to people?
A number of mobile food stores will be making their way around the state this summer. The idea is to bring fresh and affordable produce to communities without a nearby supermarket.
Pauline Zaldonis runs Hartford's mobile market and she said lots of American cities face similar issues when it comes to food access. "In Hartford you know that we only have the one full-service grocery store in the whole city," she said. "So there are many neighborhoods where people, if you don't have a car, or can't easily get yourself on the bus, it can be really difficult to have access to a store where there are fruits and vegetables being sold."
So she thought, why not drive the food to people? That's the idea behind Hartford's Mobile Market, a converted school bus that you can actually walk on to, which is filled with local produce. It makes stops all over the city, bringing local produce and other things like bananas to people without easy access to it.
It's an idea that's catching on. Urban Oaks has a truck in New Britain, there's FRESH in New London, and CitySeed in New Haven -- all of which have a kind of "mobile farm stand" feel.
Nicole Berube is CitySeed's executive director. She said with five farmer's markets across the city -- CitySeed still wasn't reaching certain populations, particularly elderly and housing authority residents. She said the mobile market better serves those populations.
And while access to food is important, she said a knowledge of it is too, so Cityseed does cooking demonstrations at their mobile market and it also tailors its inventory to the desires of individual cultures and communities.
"Not everybody wants tomatoes and basil, maybe they want turnip greens and broccoli," Berube said. "We're trying to cater to the needs of different communities within New Haven, because as we all know, we all prefer different things."
Both Berube and Zaldonis said their markets accept SNAP and WIC benefits. Schedules for where the mobile markets will be are available on their websites.
