By Kelsey Treat, Agricultural Assistant
As the growing season comes to a close, Trellis celebrates the success of our partnership with The Best Route’s to provide a Mobile Produce Market in Pottstown. The Mobile Market is a farmer’s market on wheels that brings fresh, local produce to communities struggling with food access and insecurity. The Best Route is a mobile market operations and consulting firm that helps clients navigate the complexities of starting and developing mobile markets. This year, The Best Route partnered with Trellis to pilot a twelve-week Mobile Market program in the Pottstown region, distributing local agricultural goods to various neighborhoods.
Many Pottstown residents face significant barriers to accessing fresh fruits and vegetables, including too few grocery stores located far away, limited transportation, and insufficient resources to purchase nutritious food. The Mobile Market was an effort by Trellis and The Best Route to address these barriers by reducing transportation and cost obstacles and to empower people to purchase fresh, healthy food.
The market provided several ways to support customers in affording to buy more produce. Through its loyalty program, customers who signed up with their phone number earned a $6 credit to spend on any product in the market—fruits, vegetables, eggs, and more. Each time a loyalty customer returned, they automatically earned another $6 store credit, ensuring they always had money to shop, regardless of the change in their pocket.
In addition to the loyalty program, the Mobile Market accepted Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) checks. The FMNP allows WIC recipients and low-income seniors to purchase locally grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs from Pennsylvania farmers. Since Trellis for Tomorrow is an approved grower, FMNP recipients could redeem their checks at the Mobile Market, which was a major benefit for Pottstown residents, as there are few other locations nearby where they could use these funds. Furthermore, in the future the market will be able to use their SNAP benefits to purchase food.
As an additional exciting aspect involved the Trellis SEED Skills and GROW Careers youth participants. Three Trellis youth assisted staff at the market this year as part of a paid work opportunity that contributed to their career readiness skill development.
Thanks to our partners at Lundale Farm, our Food for All partners at New Hanover Evangelical Lutheran Church, Saint-Gobain Corporation, and our SEED Skills gardens, Trellis distributed 1,523 pounds of produce to the community through the Mobile Market. This initiative was a collaborative effort among local agricultural producers, community members, youth leaders, and dedicated staff to reimagine the way food is distributed. We look forward to seeing The Best Route Mobile Market back on the road next season!
