‘Fresh Moves’ Produce Market: Greening the (Food) Desert
With help from Architects for Humanity, a “mobile food market” is bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to some of
Chicago’s neediest neighborhood
By Angie Schmitt
It’s a Friday morning in west Chicago neighborhood of
Garfield Park, and a brightly colored bus is idling out front of
a corner store, advertising cigarettes, cold cuts, and pop.
From a van in the opposite corner, a handful of people are
working to unload and load a parade of produce: tomatoes,
kiwi, pineapple, kale, green beans, mint, bananas, and
grapes, some of which is grown locally. In about an hour, the
former Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus, wrapped in an
advertising sheath that says “Fresh Moves Produce Market,”
is packed and ready to go.
Unfolding on this corner is the new model for fresh produce
retailing in Chicago. It begins here in Garfield Park, and then
winds its way to North Lawndale, then on to a school and a
senior housing facility in the Austin neighborhood.
Everywhere this bus travels is part of a food desert–
neighborhoods where mangos and radishes are scarce but
where fried chicken and potato chips are not. This is a
national problem, but one that is especially pronounced in
Chicago, particularly here on the historically impoverished
South Side and West Side.
Nationally, about 2.3 million U.S. families live more than one
mile from the grocery store and lack access to an
automobile, according to the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA). The landmark study completed six years
ago that popularized the term “food desert” found that
600,000 people in Chicago alone suffered from limited
access to healthy foods. Minority communities are
particularly vulnerable to the negative health impacts that
The Fresh Moves Produce Market bus. Image
courtesy of Architecture for Humanity.
The interior of the Fresh Moves bus. Image
courtesy of Architecture for Humanity.
come with a lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
Research has found that African-Americans living in food
deserts are significantly more likely to die from poor diet.
As the Fresh Moves bus winds its way through the streets,
men and women–some confidently (regulars), some
hesitantly (“you’re selling fruit?”)–climb aboard and find
what looks very much like a produce aisle in miniature. Along
the sides, seats have been replaced with stacked shelves
where some 50 types of fruits, vegetables, and fresh herbs
are organized inside labeled tubs. In the back there’s a cash
register, a hanging scale, and even a folding counter, where
a stack of recipe cards is perched. Shoppers linger, searching,
and deciding.
The power to visualize
Julie Davis shops here weekly on her lunch break. She grew
up in North Lawndale and now she works in the
neighborhood. Now in her 30s, “It’s always been an issue
finding fresh produce,” she says. “A lot of children here, if
they go to a corner store, there might not be any. If you get
used to not seeing it, it kind of becomes a way of life.”
Fresh Moves co-founder and board president Steven Casey
lives in a food desert himself: the Inglewood neighborhood.
The critical difference between Casey, who works for the
MacArthur Foundation, and many of his neighbors, however,
is that his family owns a car, putting many alternatives
within reasonable reach. Following release of the troubling
food desert report in 2006, community activist Jeff Pinzino
reached out to Casey. The two briefly considered trying to
tackle the problem with brick-and-mortar grocery stores. But
at that time, the nation was just beginning to feel the effects
of a long and painful real estate crisis, and the costs would
have been prohibitive. But the pair was aware of a produce
market in Oakland, Calif., that operated out of the back of a
postal truck: The People’s Grocery. Another epiphany came
when they learned that CTA is required by federal statute to
retire its buses after 12 years or 500,000 miles.
But perhaps the most pivotal moment of all, Casey recalls,
was the decision to partner with the Chicago chapter of
Volunteers strip out the old seats and grab bars
from the next Fresh Moves bus so they can
install grocery shelves. Image courtesy of Jane
Sloss.
Architecture for Humanity. Local Architecture for Humanity
co-director Katherine Darnstadt, AIA, jokes that when she
met with Pinzino and Casey, all they had to go on was “a bad
PowerPoint.”
The Chicago chapter agreed to take on the project pro-bono
and put some of its best architects on the case. The team
produced five designs incorporating everything from rooftop
solar panels to a take-out window. The research and
drawings they produced helped transform a vague idea into
a tangible project. Now, Casey and Pinzino had a concept
they would market to funders. Within six months, they had
enough money (about $150,000) to get started. That’s “the
power of being able to visualize an idea,” Darnstadt says.
Without that design assistance, Casey doubts they would
have been able to effectively communicate the concept and
turn it into a reality. “At some point telling people, ‘I want a
bus to go sell people fruits and vegetables,’ sounds like the
craziest thing you’ve ever heard,” he says. “But not when
you have a design.”
The group was able to secure a bus from the CTA for the very
reasonable price of $1. And, thanks to the simplicity of the
chosen design, retrofitting cost just a few thousand dollars.
That’s all organizational history now. May of last year saw
the Fresh Moves bus take to the streets for the first time.
Since then, Fresh Moves’ healthy wares have reached about
9,000 Chicagoans. Financial backers like Chase Bank and a
handful of others help support the organization, which costs
about $275,000 a year to operate. (Last year the bus brought
in about $50,000 in sales.) Labor costs are relatively low. The
organization employs four people: a bus mechanic and
driver, a director, and two cashiers. Maintenance and gas
costs represent a bigger portion of the budget, Casey says.
Heading into its second year, Fresh Moves is planning to
scale up. In August, the group received two additional buses
from the CTA, plus a $45,000 grant from the USDA. They
plan to expand further into the South Side.
Recognition and replicability
On a balmy day in August, Architecture for Humanity
volunteers were hard at work unscrewing seats and
removing grab bars in the two additional buses. Meanwhile,
Susha McLeod, the driver, explained to a worker what
adjustments were needed in the existing bus.
Merideth Blake, an architecture graduate student at
Chicago’s Archeworks alternative design school, was slinging
a wrench as part of her orientation, alongside 10 of her
classmates. The young woman was inspired to get into the
field after a stint working for the city of Chicago and an
assignment that involved mapping local neighborhoods.
Working with the community is exactly what Blake wants out
of her education and career. “It’s rewarding,” she says. “It
offers you, as a student, a lot of insight.”
By midday, the two buses were almost completely emptied,
save for the back benches, the air conditioning units, and the
driver’s seats, which will remain in the final design. Across
the parking lot, a worker was cutting a new countertop, one
with shelves, to provide extra storage space for Fresh
Moves’ staff. Eventually, shelves made of woven steel will be
installed, smaller at the top and deeper and larger at the
floor. When customers are shopping, the counter for the
register will fold down from the wall.
Fresh Moves’ is gaining recognition. It was featured in
Michelle Obama’s book, American Grown, as well as in
Oprah magazine. Through Nov. 25, Fresh Moves’ concept
will be at the center of the design world at the 2012 Venice
Architecture Biennale, as part of the U.S. Pavilion’s exhibit
Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common
Good. It’s also inspiring similar programs in Chattanooga,
Tenn., and Kansas City, says Casey. “That’s one of best parts,
of all of this,” he says, “It’s unbelievably replicable.”
Selling themselves
Solving the food access problem of hundreds of thousands of
Chicagoans is a daunting task. But efforts like Fresh Moves’,
as part of a larger community-wide strategy, seem to be
making progress. A recent follow-up report to the 2006
“food desert” study found that roughly 40 percent fewer
people in Chicago are living in food deserts since the initial
report.
If there’s a lesson here, Casey says, it’s that given a choice,
healthier foods have a way of selling themselves. One of his
proudest moments was a scene he witnessed on a street
corner not far away, when an ice cream trucked pulled up
behind the Fresh Moves bus. “There were two people at the
ice cream truck,” he says, “and a line at the [Fresh Moves]
bus.”
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