DC nonprofit marks 15 years of making fresh food a corner store staple – WTOP News
Corner stores aren’t usually known for being fresh fruit and vegetable hubs. D.C. Central Kitchen has spent 15 years working to change that in the District, with a focus on lower-income neighborhoods without easy access to the healthy choices found in other parts of D.C.
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“We started it in August 2011, trying to create more reliable access to healthy, affordable foods at D.C. corner stores,” said Alexander Moore, the nonprofit’s executive vice president and chief development officer.
At first, Moore said, there was hesitation — on two fronts.
Small business owners were nervous about whether there was real market demand for fresh, perishable fruits and vegetables. Customers weren’t sure that corner stores were places where they could reliably shop for healthier foods.
“We worked on both sides of that coin to identify the real gaps that were facing folks,” Moore said.
He added that shop owners needed two things: “Someone who would deliver to them, and then they needed refrigerators to hold that fresh produce.”
And customers needed assurances the food they purchased could be stored and prepared easily.
“So we did customer outreach, nutrition education, tasting demonstrations in small stores to get customers excited and confident in what they could find at these participating stores,” Moore said.
Fifteen years later, 50 D.C. corner stores are Healthy Corners sites, and D.C. Central Kitchen delivers to those stores three times a week.
“We are serving more than 27,000 SNAP customers per year through this program, and we have now brought more than three million units of fresh, nutritious fruits and vegetables to these small corner stores,” Moore said.
The food is available to any customer, not just those receiving SNAP benefits, and D.C. Central Kitchen’s broad network of suppliers and large-scale purchases keeps prices low.
“We’re helping people use their federal benefits, spend those dollars locally in their own neighborhoods and help small businesses put those resources back to work. It’s a win-win all the way down,” Moore said.
Its purchasing power and network also helps D.C. Central Kitchen ensure its food isn’t subject to the kinds of safety issues seen in produce on the national scale.
“We’re able to control our food supply chain, we’re able to be proactive in the partners that we work with to obtain our food and we’re able to have incredibly high levels of food safety,” Moore said.
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