Identifying a Food Access Model to Source Low-Income Communities with Fresh Produce

Editor’s Note: The SCM research project Identifying a Food Access Model to Source Low-Income Communities with Fresh Produce is authored by Jamal Taylor and Luiz Barreto, and supervised by Dr. Christopher Mejía Argueta ([email protected]), Director, MIT Food and Retail Operations Lab, MIT CTL. For more information on the research, please contact the project supervisor.

Malnutrition: A two-sided fight

Malnutrition affects millions of people across the world. When most people think about malnutrition, they think of undernutrition. However, malnutrition also includes the lack of access to healthy food options and overabundance of unhealthy foods. In the United States, over 20 million people live in “food deserts”: areas where there are no grocery stores that sell fresh produce within a 1-mile radius. When a food desert also overlaps with a low-income neighborhood, particularly one where many people do not have access to a car, those residents often have no access to healthy food options. Instead, they purchase most of their food from neighborhood markets and corner stores. These food retail locations tend to sell non-fresh consumer packaged goods that are more affordable, but unhealthy.

Choosing between the models

This capstone research project analyzed food access models to source food desert communities with fresh produce. Specifically, this research focused on food deserts in Somerville, Massachusetts. We analyzed three different models: (1) discounted ridesharing, where residents could utilize services like Lyft or Uber to get to grocery stores that sell fresh produce; (2) the grocery delivery model, where grocery stores deliver fresh produce straight to a resident’s doorstep; and (3) the veggie box model, which sources boxes of hand-picked vegetables directly from farmers and delivers them to neighborhood markets. In this model, residents join a subscription service where they pick up those boxes at their local corner store as they do their regular food shopping. To conduct our analysis, we spoke to stakeholders at each level of the supply chain for each of the models: farmers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers.

In addition to identifying the preferred delivery model and its feasibility, the research utilized sophisticated statistical analyses to identify the model – this has not been done before. We also provided a feasibility analysis, specifically from a supply chain standpoint, of how to source these neighborhoods utilizing the specific model that residents identified by their preferences.

Thinking inside the box

We found that the preferred model among 70% of Somerville residents was the veggie box model. Also, a supply chain feasibility study confirmed the feasibility of this model.

However, there are some considerations that managers of neighborhood markets should take in participating in this program. One key consideration is their ability to obtain a variety of produce. This will likely mean sourcing from several small farmers and possibly pool-purchasing from warehouses/distributors with other corner stores to meet the minimum order quantity. Our research also shows that market owners should take care to market veggie boxes to the appropriate demographic, but also that neighborhood markets are well positioned to promote the veggie box model due to their strong relationship with their communities.

Every year, around 80 students in the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics’ (MIT CTL) Master of Supply Chain Management (SCM) program complete approximately 45 one-year research projecs. The students are early-career business professionals from multiple countries, with two to 10 years of experience in the industry. Most of the research projects are chosen, sponsored by, and carried out in collaboration with multinational corporations. Joint teams that include MIT SCM students and MIT CTL faculty work on the real-world problems. In this series, we summarize a selection of the latest SCM research.

SC
MR