Farm To Family Mobile Market

Farm to Family Mobile Market was launched in 2011 as a St. Louis social enterprise that will sell farm fresh, healthy foods to residents of St. Louis urban food deserts. The Mobile Market will operate as a self-supporting local, fresh food distribution and merchandising service. It will be equipped to bring foods grown and produced on farms in the region’s food shed to consumers, schools, institutions and commercial customers in the St. Louis Metro Service Area. It aims to encourage consumption of fresh, locally grown produce by letting customers in the region’s food deserts benefit from the economies and efficiencies of scale achieved by a regionally focused food distributor. In addition to providing ways for residents of food deserts in the region to purchase affordable fresh fruit and produce on a year round basis, it will feature programs highlighting links between food, good health and disease management. The Market will also supply schools, day care centers, restaurants, food service enterprises and institutions with seasonal fruits and vegetables grown on farms within 200 miles of St. Louis. Locally sourced products sold will feature information about their nutritional value and about farms where they were grown as well as tips on cooking and serving.

At present the Mobile Market is operating out of the Sappington Farmers Market, a full service grocery store in St. Louis, Missouri, and is participating in the development of the St. Louis Food Hub at Lafayette Square. This unique, vertically integrated urban agriculture center brings a grocery store, food aggregation and distribution center, food processing facility, commercial greenhouse and Mobile Market Service together on a remediated Brownfield site in a mid-city St. Louis food desert. The Mobile Market Services will bring affordable, bulk quantity priced fruits and vegetables to people who are living in communities that have to now rely on corner stores, beverage stores and dollar stores for foods purchased for meals at home.

Community action and public health service agencies that address healthy eating issues are being called on to help organize weekly curbside and parking lot sales for food deserts and to promote special curbside marketing and education activities that will teach food shoppers about links between nutrition, health maintenance and disease management. Mobile Market Sales Associates will visit sites with a curbside retailing vehicle specially outfitted to efficiently present and sell fresh foods. They will be able to process USDA Subsidized Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Electronic Benefit Transfers (EBTs) for customers who could not otherwise afford to buy quantities of fruits, vegetables and farm foods for their homes. These vehicles will also deliver affordably priced Healthy Food Sacks to Healthy Eating Buyers Clubs at churches and community centers and regularly supply packaged fresh fruit and vegetables to neighborhood corner stores, dollar/discount stores and convenience stores that are food shopping mainstays in many of St. Louis’ hard pressed food desert communities.

Mobile Market Sites are intended to be co-sponsored by host organizations. The Farm to Family Mobile Market will provide the food truck, portable pavilion tent, tables, food merchandise, display equipment, wireless EBT and credit card readers, and sales associates to manage food marketing.

Healthy Eating Benefit Club Programs will provide weekly deliveries of pre-packaged, discounted assortments of fresh foods and farm foods for a set price. Members typically save between 30 to 40 percent from store prices that would be charged for the combined items included in Healthy Eating Benefit Sacks. The foods are accompanied by information about farmers that grew the items, nutrition information, recipes and cooking tips. The program is convenient for people who want an assurance of high quality, farm fresh, local foods and for consumers that face time constraints. It is particularly convenient for senior citizens and parents with children in daycare or after school care programs.