Mobile FARMacy bringing grocery store on wheels to food-insecure neighborhoods

“The Mobile FARMacy is a way to get the convenience of fresh, healthy produce, frozen proteins, dairy, eggs, and other food items out to areas where families and individuals can come in and shop in a mobile grocery store,” he said. “Ordinarily, they wouldn’t be able to shop for those kinds of items. The mobile unit eliminates the need for customers to have transportation.”

Vélez said that the food trailer is their first attempt at this idea. Most of their food trucks can’t go to neighborhoods because they’re too big to maneuver.

“We wanted to do something small enough to prove the concept and see how it works,” he said. “The families that we serve don’t really have fair and equitable access to healthy food.”

Vélez points out that it’s not just about access but also about choice.

“Instead of going into the store and telling them, ‘Here’s what you’re going to eat,’ they are able to go into the Mobile FARMacy and choose what food they want based on their cultural preferences. The folks that we’re serving are pretty diverse. Some also have religious restrictions or allergies in their household.”

The food stays cool in the truck because the unit is powered by a generator, and there’s even a refrigerator inside.

“It’s similar to creating a store,” Vélez said. “You have to think about everything involved, including power, air conditioning and even making it digitally-equipped to take SNAP benefits.”

The concept originator

While she doesn’t take credit for inventing the idea, Executive Vice President Sari Vatske brought the idea for the Mobile FARMacy to Feeding South Florida from her meetings with their national partner Feeding America.

Vatske has worked with Feeding South Florida for 10 years and has been executive vice president for the last three years. She’s now the leader of strategy and everything external with the organization.

“Back in 2017, we started working with Humana to look at how we can help improve the health of Broward County,” Vatske said. “We did a trial looking at how food insecurity affects the number of unhealthy days, as defined by the CDC. We found that transportation is a consistent barrier to access, whether it’s for kids or whether it’s for older adults.”

Health is often looked at from a disease standpoint, but wellness generally takes into account that nutrition is a key element, according to Vatske.

“The FARMacy is a natural part of the solution,” she said. “It addresses multiple issues. It allows us to deal with food deserts and transportation. This way, we can bring a grocery store into any community.”

Although the development of the trailer is a big deal, Vatske said it’s just the start.

“The FARMacy is a pilot program and, based on first indicators, both clients and the community are responding well to it,” she said. “We hope to be able to expand it and maybe have one unit per county.”

The future for the mobile unit may have a larger potential, not just in reach, but also in the vehicle itself.

“For the future, we’re looking at a larger, converted RV type of vehicle,” Vatske said. “It would help with disaster response, plus we can have full cooking demonstrations inside of it. With a larger unit, we would have cold storage underneath. We could also have doors that roll out that would hold produce. A bigger vehicle would also help with COVID protocols since right now we’re only allowing two people at a time to come through the market. So to be able to scale is something that we would love to do.”

Mobile FARMacy facts

Feeding South Florida facts