Mobile Market delivers food to Twin Cities communities in need

Herbert Hansen pushed his grocery cart through a narrow aisle inside an old former school bus, past shelves lined with white and whole-wheat bread, between coolers of fresh produce, dairy products and meat. He tossed bell peppers, tortillas and hot dogs into his cart.

The bus is the Twin Cities Mobile Market, a grocery store on wheels — more specifically, a retrofitted, propane-fueled, school bus painted lime green on the outside and filled inside with food and other household items.

It’s like a corner store stuffed into a space maybe a tenth the size of a typical mom-and-pop shop.

Hansen, 68, visits the market every Thursday morning when it pulls up in front of his home, Mt. Airy Hi-Rise in St. Paul, the subsidized housing building where he has lived for 20 years.

“I mainly pick up what I need at the time,” Hansen said. He especially looks for milk, juice and other heavy products that he avoids buying when he shops in a regular supermarket because he doesn’t want to carry them home on a bus. He doesn’t have a car.

Formerly a program operated by the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, since 2020 the Mobile Market has been a service of the Food Group, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that grew out of the Hennepin County food shelves that opened in the 1970s. Its mission is food distribution and other programs designed to get food to those in need.

Every week, two Mobile Market buses make more than 30 stops, mostly in Minneapolis and St. Paul, bringing groceries at prices lower than even those of big-box discount stores in reach of people who live in “food deserts.” That’s the term the United States Department of Agriculture uses to classify low-income neighborhoods where at least a third of residents live more than a mile from the nearest supermarket or larger grocery store.

“To quote Sean Sherman, food deserts give deserts a bad name,” said Sophia Lenarz-Coy, the Food Group’s executive director, referring to the celebrated Indigenous chef and co-founder of the Minneapolis restaurant Owamni.

“Our main goal is just to break down barriers to access,” she said.

Older customers say it also increases their independence, reducing the need to ask others for rides. Some don’t even have anyone they can ask, noted Tremaine Brown, who drives one of the buses.

Lenarz-Coy calls the food-desert phenomenon “grocery-store redlining,” comparing it to the now-illegal but once common practice of denying mortgages to qualified residents of communities largely occupied by Black people (who also were often obstructed from buying homes in majority-white neighborhoods). Food deserts are disproportionately occupied by people of color.

Food deserts exacerbate food insecurity, or access to food limited by money or other resources, which has been growing in the United States. In 2023, food insecurity rose for the second consecutive year, with 27% of adults reporting food insecurity, up from just under 25% in 2022 and 22.5% in 2019.

Experts attribute the sharp increase in hunger to the winding down of pandemic-era assistance and high inflation.

Contrary to the stereotype of low-income people preferring convenience or junk foods, many would rather have fresh ingredients but can’t easily access them, Lenarz-Coy said. In a 2019 survey, 84% of Mobile Market customers reported eating more fruits and vegetables. Another 89% said they had greater access to healthful food.

Customers buying fresh produce with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs) benefits, receive up to $10 in “Market Bucks” to buy more fresh produce at the Mobile Market or at farmers markets statewide.

But shopping at Mobile Market “shouldn’t feel like a charitable experience,” Lenarz-Coy said. “We want customers to feel like they’re our customers, because that’s what they are.”

There’s no means testing for customers, she said; anybody can shop there. It’s just an especially good deal for people with lower incomes, whose grocery spending represents a larger share of their budgets.

Some customers, like Hansen, pick up a few things between trips to a regular supermarket. Others rely on the Mobile Market for their whole weeks’ groceries, Lenarz-Coy said. So the market sells not just main ingredients, but also things like seasonings, condiments, paper towels and detergent.

Prices are competitive with — and in many cases lower than — those in stores known for low prices, like Cub Foods, Target and Walmart. For instance, as of earlier this week, green bell peppers were 75 cents apiece at Target, 86 cents at Walmart and 99 cents at Cub. At the Mobile Market, they’re 69 cents apiece. A pound of butter costs at least $4.49 a pound at Cub — and a dollar cheaper at the Mobile Market. The Mobile Market’s price for a bag of dried pinto beans is 50 cents lower than Target’s. Eggs are $2.49 a dozen at the Mobile Market and upward of $3.42 at Walmart.

In response to customers’ requests, the Mobile Market also has stocked foods from other cultures less familiar in U.S. markets, like fufu, Brown said.

“We rotate, try to keep stuff people buy,” she said.

Brown, a former Metro Transit bus driver, has been behind the wheel of a Mobile Market bus for three years.

“I went in for the interview, and I’ve been hooked ever since,” she said. “I just love serving people. I interact with them and love how we all talk.”

Brown likes hearing customers say things like, “I don’t know what I’d do without you, I’m so thankful that you come.”

“It makes you feel like your job is very worth doing,” Brown said.