Thanksgiving is one of the most meaningful times of the year for many households. It is a time for families, friends, and communities to come together over a hot meal and celebrate each other. At Fresh Truck, we are proud of the role we play as a reliable resource for the fresh, healthy ingredients that will be on the Thanksgiving tables of thousands of Boston families.
Every holiday season our schedule is jam packed with community events and turkey giveaways to get as much fresh food as possible to Bostonians that need it most. Here are the some of the highlights:
We’re currently wrapping up our four-month long partnership with athenahealth, as part of their “Together We Grow” campaign. By Thanksgiving, we’ll have provided a week’s worth of fresh fruits and veggies to nearly 1,000 families across Massachusetts.
That’s all on top of our weekly markets, where we’re expecting to see nearly 3,000 shoppers in the month of November! This month, we’ll sell roughly 4,500 tomatoes, 4,000 apples, 3,000 potatoes and sweet potatoes, and 2,500 yellow and red onions.
This Thanksgiving, Fresh Truck is especially thankful for our hardworking, caring, and empathetic partners across Boston. Whether it comes in the form of a saved parking spot, neighborhood flyers, volunteer hours, or moral support, our partners are always there to support us and we could not do this work without them. They’re the apples of our eye! Who or what are you thankful for this time of year? Let us know in the comments!
We work with a network of partners, volunteers, and supporters who are essential to the work that we do. This series of spotlights will highlight the contribution of these fantastic groups and individuals. Find out more about one of our most consistent volunteers, Noemie. Interested in volunteering with Fresh Truck? Sign up at www.freshtruck.org/volunteer.
Name: Noemie Bechu
Age: 22
Current residence: Jamaica Plain, MA
Occupation: In-home therapy clinician at the Brookline Community Mental Health Center
Fresh Truck volunteer since: August 2018
Favorite volunteer location: Pop-ups. I love seeing how excited everyone is to have the truck come to their neighborhood.
I volunteer with Fresh Truck because: I love Fresh Truck’s mission to help people of lower socioeconomic status gain access to affordable healthy food. There’s a big community around Fresh Truck and this community (staff, volunteers, shoppers) has kept me coming back.
My favorite Fresh Truck memory is: Everyone who comes on the truck is so friendly and grateful, and one women shared with me her recipe to make eggplant parmesan. It was a small moment, but she was ecstatic to share it with me.
We work with a network of partners, volunteers, and supporters who are essential to the work that we do. This series of spotlights will highlight the contribution of these fantastic groups and individuals. First up is one of our most dedicated volunteers, Caroline. Interested in volunteering with Fresh Truck? Sign up at www.freshtruck.org/volunteer.
Name: Caroline Mullen
Age: 21
Current residence: Quincy, MA
Occupation: Nursing student at University of Massachusetts Boston
Fresh Truck volunteer since: July 2018
Favorite volunteer location: Villa Victoria Apartments, South End, Boston
I volunteer with Fresh Truck because: As a nursing student, I have learned that one of a nurse’s largest roles is health promotion, which, in turn, leads to illness prevention. After discovering Fresh Truck and its mission to radically improve community health by bringing healthy food to those that need it, I fell in love with the work that this organization was doing, and I wanted to be part of this mission. I also loved how, unlike other organizations, I can volunteer at any market I want and there’s no weekly commitment I have to give to volunteer. This works well with my school and athletic commitments during the school year.
This summer and fall, Fresh Truck has been fortunate enough to partner with athenahealth to run “Together We Grow”, a series of pop-up events at 10 community health centers across Massachusetts, with a goal to help health centers provide patients with access to fresh food. At each event, athenahealth provides 100 shoppers with $10 each to shop for fruits and vegetables at Fresh Truck. In addition to sponsoring the produce, athenahealth has generously provided tote bags and a healthy chickpea salad recipe, with ingredients that shoppers can pick up on the truck.
The pop-ups have provided great volunteer opportunities for athenahealth employees. At each event, employees from across the athenahealth network help Fresh Truck staff distribute tote bags, restock shelves, and check shoppers out. They have even hosted a guacamole tasting for shoppers waiting in line.
By the time we complete the series of pop-ups, athenahealth and Fresh Truck will have provided nearly 1,000 shoppers with $10,000 of fresh fruits and vegetables. We’re so thankful for the hard work and enthusiasm of the entire athenahealth team to put this series of events together!
Interested in sponsoring programming with Fresh Truck? Contact Megan Huang, Program Manager, at megan@thefreshtruck.org.
Blog / This is how we roll: New Schedule Development
Now that Fresh Truck has been on the road for a few years we get a lot of questions about how we make decisions about how to operate the market and design our programs. To answer these questions and many more we are starting a blog series called ‘This is how we roll’. This month we will cover how we develop our new weekly market schedule.
Developing our new schedule
It’s that time of year again; we’re launching our new weekly market schedule September 24th! We’re excited for the opportunity to meet the demand for fresh food in our current neighborhoods, as well as in neighborhoods we aren’t currently serving. Three times a year, we make adjustments to our weekly market schedule to make sure that we’re having the greatest possible impact. We first evaluate our current weekly market sites and then consider new potential sites.
Evaluating current sites
We use shopper engagement to evaluate the success of a weekly market stop. We want to make sure that enough people are shopping with Fresh Truck that it makes sense for us to stay at a certain weekly market site. For stops with low engagement, we work with our site partner to brainstorm ways to bring out more shoppers. For stops with high engagement, we work with our site partner to expand market hours.
Evaluating new sites
There are two main ways that we identify potential new weekly market stops.
Inbound requests – Organizations or community members request a Fresh Truck weekly market in their area.
Outbound requests – We approach partners in neighborhoods where there is low access to fresh, affordable food.
We consider several factors that may affect the viability of a stop when making our new schedule:
Distance from current weekly market stops – Because we have a limited number of weekly market hours to spread across the week, we choose sites that are strategically-placed relative to our existing weekly market sites.
Level of need – We target areas with high SNAP (Food Stamps) user density or where there is limited access to fresh, affordable food.
Parking – We drive a big bus, and need a place to park it. We rely on our partners to provide a space for us. An off-the-street parking lot is ideal, but partners can also block off a space on the street on the morning of the market.
Partner capacity – Strong partners can provide things like translation services and outreach, and can use their expertise about the community to support the success of the market.
Scheduling – At every schedule change, we piece together the current and new weekly markets to accommodate each partner’s time and day preferences.
Food programs – We are mindful of how federal or state food programs may affect our shopper’s purchasing behavior.
After running a couple test events and getting feedback from our partners and shoppers, we piece together our new weekly market schedule and share it with everyone. Look out for our new schedule Monday, September 24th!
Blog / This is how we roll: New Schedule Development
Blog / This is how we roll: New Base of Operations
Now that Fresh Truck has been on the road for a few years we get a lot of questions about how we make decisions about how to operate the market and design our programs. To answer these questions and many more we are starting a blog series called ‘This is how we roll’. This month we will cover our move to our new base of operations.
Fresh Truck moved into our current location at 69 Shirley St. in Roxbury at the end of June 2018. It serves as the base of operations for our administrative staff, bus operations/parking, and food storage, bringing the whole team together to the same place. We share the 4000 square foot warehouse with City Fresh Foods, a healthy school lunch catering company. It has been a year-long process that brought us here.
For years, Fresh Truck operated out of CommonWealth Kitchen (CWK), an incubator that supports early stage food businesses. CWK provided us with food storage, bus parking, and other basic infrastructure that is burdensome for smaller companies to manage. As we built new buses and started moving more pallets of food every day, however, we slowly outgrew the available resources at CWK, and had to begin to look for a space for the future.
A few things that we needed to think about:
What was our budget? How much were we spending between our administrative office, bus parking, and food storage? How much of an investment could our fundraising support?
Where are we going to be in 1 year? 3 years? 5 years? We had to consider staff growth, food throughput, vehicle buildout plans, and more. We needed a space that would continue to support us down the road.
Where did we need to be? We wanted to strike a balance between where our current staff live, how it affects their commute, and where our market locations were.
What features and amenities were we looking for? The obvious ones were a loading dock and cold storage. But, as we explored our options, features that we took for granted, like security, bathrooms, and delivery receiving support did not always come with the property.
We began by looking at some options with real estate agents. It was a struggle. Most of the commercial warehousing options meant for produce/meat/fish wholesale distributors were way too large and too expensive, frequently upwards of 10,000 square feet for more than $10,000/month. They were out of our budget, but they were also some of the only options with essential features like offices and cold storage. We then turned to smaller offices/retail storefronts; these would be the regular restaurant space or a retail store front in a strip mall. These were in the right range in terms of size, but lacking in facilities. We would have had to bring in our own cold storage, and build a loading dock (if it were even possible). These spaces also rarely had parking intended for 40 ft. school buses. We were at a standstill.
We knew that we would need to share the space with another organization. Someone with similar needs for a loading dock and food storage, someone who may have a surplus of space, and would value a partner to shoulder the burden for rent. We reached out to a variety of organizations in the city that consisted of other food rescue and nonprofits. We also talked to some other food businesses that were also about to graduate from CWK, who would be willing to jointly lease a space.
Fortunately, one of the smaller locations that came up for rent was next to City Fresh Foods, an organization we were familiar with, and we reached out about sharing the space. It comes with existing cold storage, parking for three buses, at a location that is central to our operating communities.
Thanks to hard work by all of our staff and support from City Fresh, we were able to transition bases without interrupting our weekly market schedule. We have a whole new set of challenges to work through, but we love our new space. We are learning how to share space and work in tandem with new neighbors, and we’re already seeing our operations become more efficient. 69 Shirley St. is already beginning to feel like home!
Blog / This is how we roll: New Base of Operations
Blog / We were granted $100k by the Cummings Foundation!
Fresh Truck is one of 100 local nonprofits to receive grants of $1OO,OOO each through Cummings Foundation’s “$1OOK for 1OO” program. The Boston-based organization was chosen from a total of 597 applicants, during a competitive review process. Cummings Foundation has announced a total of $2O million in grants to Greater Boston charities in the past two months alone.
This award from the Cummings Foundation will support the growth of our Weekly Market program helping us reach more than 2O Boston area locations by the end of 2O18. “Fresh Truck is honored to have been selected as a grant recipient through Cummings Foundation’s 1OOK for 1OO program,” said Fresh Truck’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Josh Trautwein. “This grant will directly support the continued growth of our Weekly Market program that provides access to fresh, affordable food to more than 4,OOO Boston households.”
The $1OOK for 1OO program supports nonprofits that are based in and primarily serve Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties. Through this place-based initiative, Cummings Foundation aims to give back in the area where it owns commercial buildings, all of which are managed, at no cost to the Foundation, by its affiliate Cummings Properties. Founded in 197O by Bill Cummings of Winchester, the Woburn-based commercial real estate firm leases and manages 11 million square feet of space, the majority of which exclusively benefits the Foundation.
“We are indebted to the nonprofit organizations like Fresh Truck that have a meaningful positive impact on the local communities where our colleagues and clients live and work,” said Joel Swets, Cummings Foundation’s executive director. “We are delighted to invest in their important programs and services.”
The complete list of 100 grant winners will be available beginning June 7th at www.CummingsFoundation.org.
Blog / We were granted $100k by the Cummings Foundation!
Now that Fresh Truck has been on the road for a few years we get a lot of questions about how we make decisions about how to operate the market and design our programs. To answer these questions and many more we are starting a blog series called ‘This is how we roll’. This month we will cover how we develop our Weekly Market schedule.
Fresh Truck increases access to healthy food by operating a year-round Weekly Mobile Market program across low-income communities in Boston. The market serves the same location at the same time each week carrying around 40 different fresh, nutritious, affordably priced food items. Over the past 4 years, we have learned a lot about what it takes to establish a strong Weekly Market site. As a result, we have developed a framework for location development that ensures our market is serving the right people at the right time and location that is most convenient for them.
Partnerships – What organizations can we work with in the neighborhood?
Working with the right partners can make all the difference. Nearly all of our Weekly Market locations are developed in partnership with organizations that are invested in keeping families and seniors healthy. Our strongest partners are health centers, housing developments, and other social service agencies.
Market support. Our partners often provide wrap-around support for the market including translation help, indoor waiting areas during colder weather and blocking off a parking space for the market. In advance of establishing the location, we work with partners to agree on expectations for ongoing market support.
The more the merrier. Our most successful market locations are partnered with four or more nearby community organizations who support the infrastructure and drive potential shoppers to the market.
Parking spot – Where should the market be positioned so that it is accessible and visible to the most people?
Secure a spot. Parking is the most obvious requirement for having a mobile market site but can occasionally be overlooked when it comes to logistics. A partner-owned parking lot is by far the best option but at several of our locations, we rely on our partners to put out cones in the morning or to make use of their load/unload zones.
Visibility is critical. We find that most of our first-time shoppers were within eyeshot of the market when they decided to come check it out. We work hard to secure parking spots that are highly visible from the street, even moving a few yards can make a big difference.
Build on existing habits. It is hard to get people to break from their busy routines so we try to be in places they are already going on a daily or weekly basis. This can mean parking in front of after-school programs at pick-up times or outside of a drug store so families only have to make one trip.
Outreach – Who is nearby the location and how can we best reach them?
Pound the pavement. We know it’s old school, but distributing flyers and having face-to-face conversations are the best way to get the word out about a new market location.
Activate your advocates. We work hard to delight all of our shoppers and make sure shopping at Fresh Truck an experience worth telling their friends about. Several of our shoppers are excited to go a step further and conduct outreach for Fresh Truck within their neighborhood. We empower our advocates by setting them up with Fresh Truck swag, flyers and coupons to distribute to their friends and neighbors.
We’re on a mission to radically impact community health in Boston by celebrating community food culture and getting fresh food to those who need it most. Fresh Truck operates two renovated school buses as mobile food markets, stocked with fresh fruit, vegetables, and healthy snacks. We partner with health centers and other community organizations to combine their services with access to affordable, healthy food.
What you’ll do
Support daily mobile market operations: customer service, bus loading/unloading, inventory management, restocking, cleaning
Create an inviting customer shopping experience through consistent engaging customer service
Communicate with shoppers, community partners, and co-workers
Support Fresh Truck initiatives such as community outreach, customer surveys, and operations process improvement
Who you are
A young person eager to learn about food access and community health in Boston
Willing to get your hands dirty and comfortable with some heavy lifting
You embrace working within diverse community settings and with a strong sense of social justice; being multilingual (Spanish, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Cantonese) and/or a Boston native is huge a plus
Benefits
$11/hour
Groceries at the end of each shift
The opportunity to shape Fresh Truck’s growth
Work day in and day out to make Boston a healthier city
Contact
We’re excited to hear from you! To apply send a resume to Jobs@thefreshtruck.org
