2023 Mobile Market Summit

Cultivate KC recently announced our newest Food Access program, the Dotte Mobile Grocer! We are so excited to work with Dotte Local Grocer and the Mobile Market Community Council to bring a new and innovative grocery option to Northeast Kansas City, Kansas. To prepare for our official launch, Cultivate KC’s Food Access Program Manager, Jessica Cooney, attended the Veggie Van Training Center’s 2023 Mobile Market Summit on March 13 & 14^th in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This was the 5^th installation of the summit and brought together over 100 mobile market operators from across the country!

The two day summit featured a Keynote Address from Erin White, leader of the Community Food Lab, a creative practice asking what it means to design the complicated territory of food systems and how mobile markets are a new and groundbreaking addition to communities. The summit also included a Mobile Market Rodeo, featuring six mobile markets that drove to the summit. The Mobile Market Rodeo gave space to highlight successes and let attendees check out their vehicles. It was incredible to see the innovative ways in which organizations have retrofitted buses and trucks to be vehicles for food distribution.

Over the course of the summit, Jessica attended sessions including; Mobile Market Opportunities in Food as Medicine, Build-a-Bus: Mobilizing Missions In Real Life, Mobilizing Local Food Procurement Efforts, Midwest Region Networking, and more! We’re excited to bring the knowledge, resources, and expertise that were shared at the summit to our program and the Wyandotte County community.

Thank you to KS SARE and the University at Buffalo for sponsoring Jessica’s trip to the Mobile Market Summit!