If You Can’t Bring People to the Groceries, Bring Groceries to the People

By Lily Baumgart, Jacob O’Donnell, Jessi Peterson 

In our discussion as a class on the East Whatcom Food Landscape Assessment, we generated many new ideas for projects combating food insecurity in the rural communities of East Whatcom County. These ideas ranged from policy incentives, such as subsidies, to bring grocery stores into these communities, to pop-up food stands that would supply people with fresh food. Accessibility is an important need for the people of East Whatcom County and that includes access to medicines from pharmacies and items from other types of retail outlets. Similar to the mobile library of Whatcom County, which is already in use, a topic of conversation was a mobile grocery store.  

Mobile grocery trucks are gaining momentum across the country as a method to combat food deserts. For example, the Twin Cities Mobile Market in Minnesota is a bus that brings affordable and nutritional foods to neighborhoods without full-service supermarkets or grocery stores (Mobile Grocery Store Units Case Study – EcoDistrict, n.d.). Funding for the Mobile Market came from the Wilder Foundation nonprofit as well as through an IndieGoGo campaign (Mobile Grocery Store Units Case Study – EcoDistrict, n.d.). 

 Another example of a mobile grocery program is Curbside Groceries in the Ward 8 area of Washington D.C., which is a truck that brings affordable, fresh foods to seven designated locations in the neighborhood (Beckham, 2021). The truck provides produce, meat, fish, baking, and condiment options to residents who had expressed transportation barriers to getting to grocery stores (Beckham, 2021).  

In Lexington, Kentucky, the mayor recently set aside $260,000 for a new mobile food program due to transportation being a significant barrier to people having consistent access to quality food (Stratman, 2022). As efforts to address food insecurity and food deserts evolve and mobile grocery trucks become more prominent across the country, there may be an opportunity for East Whatcom County to learn from these programs and take part in a mobile grocery truck project. 

 A mobile grocery truck would bring high-quality food directly to the neighborhoods of East Whatcom County residents so that they don’t have to spend time and money traveling to Bellingham to get food or shop at expensive convenience stores in the area. 80% of East Whatcom County residents would prefer to shop locally rather than driving to Bellingham. However, many challenges work against a local grocery store; including restrictive zoning by the Whatcom County Government, supply chain challenges with heavy snow and power outages in the winter, and an undercount of the amount of people living in the area, according to the 2019 East Whatcom County Food Landscape Assessment.  

A grocery truck can circumvent these issues because it can bring a wide selection of healthy foods at the same affordable prices found in Bellingham, and it can travel to each town along the Mount Baker Highway. The Mount Baker Highway is regularly plowed for ski tourists heading up to Mount Baker and the towns of Acme, Kendall, Maple Falls, and Glacier are strung along it like a necklace. The area also has plenty of schools and other natural gathering places where the trucks could park.  

Most critically, the trucks could be equipped to deliver prescriptions. A grocery store with a pharmacy in East Whatcom County is a pipe dream for all the same reasons that a grocery store without one is not considered feasible, only an even smaller portion of the population needs prescriptions than they do groceries. These people, however, are predominantly elderly people and people with disabilities and must be served both good, affordable food, and must be able to get their prescriptions on time without having to rely on good enough weather to drive to Bellingham. Groceries on wheels programs are being tried in other rural communities across the country, why not here?  

Citations: 

Beckham, A. (2021). In Ward 8, A Mobile Grocery Store Is Helping To Close Gaps In Food Access. NPR.Org. https://www.npr.org/local/305/2021/03/25/981166507/in-ward-8-a-mobile-grocery-store-is-helping-to-close-gaps-in-food-access 

Mobile Grocery Store Units Case Study—EcoDistrict. (n.d.). EcoDistricts. Retrieved April 20, 2022, from https://ecodistricts.org/information-exchange/mobile-grocery-store-units/ 

Robinson, A. (Spring 2019). East Whatcom County Food Landscape Assessment. Whatcom County Health Department.  

Stratman, J. (2022, April 20). Mayor Gorton’s proposed budget sets aside funds for ‘mobile grocery store.’ Https://Www.Wkyt.Com. https://www.wkyt.com/2022/04/20/mayor-gortons-proposed-budget-sets-aside-funds-mobile-grocery-store/