Video: Bottino’s ShopRite
Overview
Video: Vicente’s Tropical Supermarket
Overview
Manuel B. Vicente has owned and operated a grocery store Brockton, MA, for 20 years that started as a small specialty food store and has grown into a full-size supermarket. In spring 2015, Vicente opened a second store that almost doubles the size of the existing store and creates a modern, full-service store catering to the tastes and preferences of the Cape Verdean community that predominates the city of Brockton, a suburb south of Boston. The market is located in a low-income census tract (55% of AMI) and serves residents of Limited Supermarket Access areas.
Research Your Community Data Indicators and Sources
Overview
The document outlines the indicators included in the Research Your Community mapping tool, including their sources.
Healthy Food Access
Overview
This brief provides an overview of Reinvestment Fund's healthy food access investments and initaitives. A community development financial institution (CDFI), Reinvestment Fund is a national leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. Beginning with the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative in 2004, Reinvestment Fund has taken a comprehensive approach to improving access to healthy, fresh food in low-income communities through the innovative use of capital and information.
The Grocery Gap
Overview
PolicyLink and The Food Trust present The Grocery Gap, the most comprehensive review of studies of healthy food access and its impacts, reaffirming that access to healthy food is a critical component of healthy, thriving communities:
Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters: A Review of Research (2013): An update to The Grocery Gap, the original report, this edition drew upon more than 170 studies, published between 2010 and 2013, in an attempt to synthesize and present the latest research on healthy food access and identify where gaps may still exist since the first report.
The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters (2010): The first groundbreaking report in 2010 reviewed 132 studies conducted in the United States in the past 20 years.
Blueprint for a National Food Strategy
Overview
The Blueprint for a National Food Strategy, a collaborative project between the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School and Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, examines the potential for developing a national food strategy in the United States. Through legal and original research, the Blueprint Project considers the need for a national food strategy, how other countries have developed national food strategies in response to similar food systems challenges faced by the United States, and the process by which the United States has developed national strategies in response to other issues. The resources created by this project provide a roadmap for the adoption of national food strategy in order to ensure a food secure future for all Americans.
Taking Stock of New Supermarkets in Food Deserts: Patterns in Development, Financing, and Health Promotion
Overview
Author(s): Benjamin W. Chrisinger, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine
Across the U.S., neighborhoods face disparate healthy food access, which has motivated federal, state, and local initiatives to develop supermarkets in “food deserts.” Differences in the implementation of these initiatives are evident, including the presence of health programming, yet no comprehensive inventory of projects exists to assess their impact. Using a variety of data sources, this paper provides details on all supermarket developments under “fresh food financing” regimes in the U.S. from 2004-2015, including information such as project location, financing, development, and the presence of health promotion efforts. The analysis identifies 126 projects, which have been developed in a majority of states, with concentrations in the mid-Atlantic and Southern California regions. Average store size was approximately 28,100 square feet, and those receiving financial assistance from local sources and New Markets Tax Credits were significantly larger, while those receiving assistance from other federal sources were significantly smaller. About 24 percent included health-oriented features; of these, over 80 percent received federal financing. If new supermarkets alone are insufficient for health behavior change, greater attention to these nuances is needed from program designers, policymakers, and advocates who seek to continue fresh food financing programs. Efforts to reduce rates of diet-related disease by expanding food access can be improved by taking stock of existing efforts.
Cultivating Equitable Food-Oriented Development: Lessons from West Oakland
Overview
The second of a three-part series by PolicyLink and Mandela MarketPlace, this case study highlights the ongoing work of Mandela MarketPlace and its partners to build a local food system that prioritizes community ownership in the San Francisco Bay Area. The case study explores how the Mandela ecosystem has grown and evolved, and the operations, inner workings, and relationships across its tightly woven network. View the accompanying photo essay, with original photography from Mandela MartketPlace, including a photo courtesy of Michael Short Photography.
Read the first case study, Transforming West Oakland: A Case Study Series on Mandela MarketPlace, which tells the history and background of the organization and outlines critical factors that contributed to its existing infrastructure and framework of local ownership. View the accompanying photo essay, with original photography from Mandela MartketPlace, and read this blog post by Dana Harvey, executive director at Mandela MarketPlace.
Evaluation Toolkit: Roadmap for Building and Sustaining Local Food Policy Groups
Overview
Developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) for food policy councils (FPCs), this advocacy capacity toolkit was designed to help FPCs assess their current capacity to work on advocacy and policy and provide them with appropriate recommendations and resources to reach their strategic goals.
Food System Primer
Overview
The Primer offers short, easy-to-digest readings about topics from farm to fork, peppered with anecdotes and images that bring concepts to life. Directories of articles, reports, lesson plans, and other resources help food system scholars dig deeper into the issues. Developed by leading experts and educators at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, it is designed for educators, students, interested citizens, journalists, policymakers and researchers.
An Introduction to the US Food System: Perspectives from Public Health
Overview
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future is now offering an updated, on-demand version of our free, online Coursera course. In this short course, we provide a brief introduction to the U.S. food system and how food production practices and what we eat impacts the world in which we live. We discuss some key historical and political factors that have helped shape the current food system and consider alternative approaches from farm to fork.
USDA Resource Guide for American Indians & Alaska Natives
Overview
Developed by Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, this guide aims to support Tribal communities gain a better understanding of the vast USDA programs and funding authorities for support of their visions.
Regaining Our Future: An Assessment of Risks and Opportunities for Native Communities in the 2018 Farm Bill
Overview
Commissioned by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, this report represents the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted on Farm Bill issues relevant to Indigenous populations in the United States. Regaining Our Future argues that Native communities must be prepared to better advocate for their interests, defend programs on which their most vulnerable members depend, and look for new ways to achieve greater food sovereignty through reform of federal policies.
U.S. Veterans Serve at Home by Combating Food Deserts
Overview
The shuttering of three area Walmart stores forced residents in a 44 square mile swath of southwest Wichita, Kansas to live in a food desert. However through the partnership and support of the CDFI Fund, Enterprise Community Loan Fund and veteran-owned business Honor Capital, low-income families again have access to healthy food options and locally-driven economic opportunity.
Treasure Coast Food Bank
Overview
Based on market analysis and research provided by Reinvestment Fund, Florida Community Loan Fund developed a strategy described as a “supermarket plus” model of fresh food financing where food retail is a piece of a larger strategy focused on food security and healthy eating. This brief profile is an example of this FCLF strategy in action through a partnership with Treasure Coast Food Bank to expand its ability to distribute and process fresh fruits and vegetables.
Building Success of Food Hubs Through the Cooperative Experience
Overview
This report focuses on the experiences of four cooperatives in New York and Pennsylvania in aggregating, marketing, and distributing produce on behalf of their members.
Innovations among Food Banks in the United States
Overview
This new report by Reinvestment Fund and Bank of America looks at how food banks are adopting a variety of approaches within each of these categories to feed the hungry and permanently end food insecurity.
Getting to Market: Supermarket Access in Lower Income Areas
Overview
The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) performed a detailed analysis of supermarket access in 10 metropolitan areas, and the results are discussed in a new video, “Getting to Market.” Results from the analysis encourage users to view the locations of, and generate reports about, low-supermarket-access communities within the 10 metropolitan areas.
Colorado Enterprise Fund: Improving Food System through Healthy Food Financing to Small Businesses
Overview
This profile by Reinvestment Fund highlights Colorado Enterprise Fund’s experience building its healthy food financing portfolio to provide insights for other CDFIs engaged in this work across the nation.
Marketing for Food Hubs
Overview
This website serves as a resource hub and academic paper on the role of food hubs in marketing to the end-user, including:
- Customizable marketing flyer templates
- Best practices for print and social media marketing (with links to other useful resources)
- Inspirational examples from food hubs doing a great job
- Academic hybrid paper, with both a) research on the history and future potential of food hubs, and b) actionable recommendations for food hubs to help their customers market products and maintain source-identification to the end-user consumer.