Originally published 2015-10-15.
The Mobile Good Food Market, a former Toronto Wheel-Trans bus refitted to sell fresh produce.
Toronto's Mobile Good Food Market was a simple idea: if people cannot easily get to fresh fruit and vegetables, bring the fruit and vegetables to them. In 2014 the non-profit FoodShare Toronto, working with the City of Toronto and United Way Toronto, turned a retired city bus into a rolling produce stand. Fold-out shelves along its side held lettuce, apples, berries, onions and broccoli, and it parked at regular stops in neighbourhoods where supermarkets were few and far between. The project became one of the best-known examples of a mobile market tackling what are often called "food deserts".
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
How a transit bus became a grocery store
The vehicle was a decommissioned Wheel-Trans bus donated by the Toronto Transit Commission. Wheel-Trans is the city's accessible transit service, so the bus already had ramps, which made it easy to adapt for shoppers using wheelchairs, walkers or strollers. The conversion was designed by LGA Architectural Planners. Shelving panels fold out from the side of the bus to create an open-air market display, and more bins of produce are kept inside, where customers can also shop when the weather is bad. The design was meant to be simple enough for one person to set up and restock.
Before the bus, FoodShare had tested the concept with a box truck, a canopy and a fold-out table. The bus gave the market a permanent, eye-catching presence that residents learned to recognise.
Fold-out shelves turned the side of the bus into a market stall.
Where it went and what it sold
Stops were chosen through consultation with local residents and an analysis of where gaps in food access were worst. Early coverage named neighbourhoods such as Lawrence Heights and Woburn, along with communities of isolated apartment towers in Toronto's inner suburbs, areas where many people rely on buses and a trip to a full supermarket can take a large part of the day. A FoodShare summary from around 2015 described six regular locations, with staff and volunteers packing the vehicle and selling for one to two hours at each stop.
The produce mixed seasonal Ontario fruit and vegetables with imported staples chosen to suit each neighbourhood. That meant not only apples and carrots but also yuca, cassava, plantain and eddoe, foods that matter in Caribbean, African and Filipino home cooking and are hard to find in small convenience stores. Local residents were trained and paid as "market leaders" to help run the stops, which built trust and kept the market connected to the community it served.
The produce range was adapted to the cooking traditions of each neighbourhood.
Was it cheap?
The Mobile Good Food Market was not a free food programme. Customers paid for what they bought, and because running a bus, buying stock and paying staff all cost money, prices were broadly similar to a supermarket rather than dramatically lower. Coverage at the time described them as good value. The real advantage was convenience and quality: families who might otherwise rely on corner stores could buy fresh, nutritious food a short walk from home.
The money side was always the hardest part. The project was funded by a mix of partners, including the City of Toronto's food strategy team, United Way Toronto, FoodShare itself and a provincial innovation fund. FoodShare's own figures showed the mobile market was a small slice of its overall produce sales, and the organisation said its biggest need was steady funding for day-to-day operating costs.
Customers shopped from the outside shelves or stepped inside the bus.
What "food deserts" are, and what research says
In the United States, the Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a low-income area where many residents live more than a mile from a supermarket in a city, or more than ten miles in the countryside. A widely quoted USDA estimate from 2009 put the number of Americans living in such areas at about 23.5 million, and more recent USDA figures are similar, at around 22 million. Canadian cities, including Toronto, have their own pockets of poor access, often in suburban tower neighbourhoods built around cars.
For years, food deserts were blamed for rising obesity and diet-related illness. Research since then suggests the link is real but weaker than once assumed. A 2019 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that when supermarkets open in low-income areas, eating habits change only slightly; most of the gap in diet quality between rich and poor households is explained by differences in price, habits, time and preferences rather than by distance alone. Some researchers argue that "food swamps", areas crowded with fast-food outlets, matter more than the absence of a grocery store, and activists such as Karen Washington prefer the term "food apartheid" to highlight how income, race and history shape access.
That is why projects like Toronto's work best when they do more than sell vegetables. Choosing culturally familiar foods, hiring local residents, keeping prices fair and turning up reliably every week all address the reasons people do not buy fresh food, not just the distance they would have to travel.
Similar ideas elsewhere
Toronto was not alone. Mobile produce markets have run in many North American cities, often in converted buses, trucks or shipping containers, and Toronto itself later tried related approaches, including pop-up produce stands in subway stations that drew on lessons from the bus. The common thread is meeting people where they already are, whether that is a transit hub, an apartment complex or a community centre parking lot.
A mobile market works best when residents know exactly when and where it will be.
Lessons for anyone starting a mobile market
- Ask residents first. Toronto's stops were chosen with community input, which helped the market fit local needs.
- Stock what people actually cook. Culturally familiar produce sells better than a generic list.
- Be reliable. A fixed weekly schedule matters as much as the vehicle.
- Plan for running costs. Buying or converting a vehicle is the easy part; paying for fuel, staff and stock every week is the real challenge.
- Measure results. Tracking customers, sales and feedback makes it easier to win continued funding.
The converted bus did not solve food insecurity in Toronto on its own, and it was never meant to. What it showed is that a modest, well-designed idea, built with the people it serves, can make healthy food a normal part of daily life in places that had been left out.
Sources: WebUrbanist, December 2014; Toronto Life, 2014; FoodShare Mobile Good Food Market summary (Sustain Ontario); City of Toronto report, 2017; Wikipedia: Food desert; first shared via True Activist.
COMMENTS