Giving Compass' Take:

• A Chicago nonprofit sells fresh fruits and vegetables from renovated buses to counteract the lack of full-service grocery stores in local neighborhoods. 

• How can funders help expand research on fresh and local food and nutrition?

• Food banks are also making the move to using fresh produce. Click here to learn more. 


Each week, Chicago’s Fresh Moves Mobile Market delivers fresh produce to more than a dozen schools and community and health centers using renovated city buses. These mobile markets transport fresh food to places where people already are—including the Komed Holman Health Center, the Academy for Global Citizenship, and the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library.

Fresh Moves Mobile Market is one of several Urban Growers Collective programs that UGC founders, Laurell Sims and Erika Allen, have undertaken since fall 2017. Fresh Moves Mobile Market evolved from the nonprofit Growing Power Chicago (GPC). Modeled after Growing Power Milwaukee, it was inherited by UGC.

“About five years ago the city of Chicago asked us to take over the program when the nonprofit folded,” Sims tells Food Tank. “We changed to growing food with a focus on how to heal folks.” Sims is Chief Executive Officer, Finance.

Fresh Moves Mobile Market is a natural outgrowth of UGC “because we grow food in the community and we want people with limited access to have the ability to consume culturally appropriate, healthy vegetables,” says Allen, Chief Executive Officer, Operations. Wholesale fruit is also available in the mobile market.

Read the full article on Chicago's Fresh Moves Mobile Market by Lisa Waterman Gray at Food Tank.