Food bus back on the road
Everyone welcome to buy fresh, affordable produce at mobile market
SYDNEY — The Good Food Bus will be back on the road this weekend.
After sitting idle during the COVID-19 pandemic, the mobile market will once again deliver fresh, affordable food to Cape Breton Regional Municipality communities, beginning Saturday with stops in Glace Bay and Whitney Pier.
“It's about making healthy food more accessible,” said Emma Jerrott, co-ordinator of the New Dawn Enterprises-led project. “If you have to take a cab to the grocery store, or get on a bus, maybe the food bus is coming to your community, so it will be a little easier to access some fruits and vegetables.”
The retrofitted HandiTrans bus will be at Warden United Church on Fifth Street in Glace Bay from 1011:30 a.m. on Saturday, before rolling on to the Polish Village Hall on Victoria Road in Whitney Pier from 1-2:30 p.m.
Essentially a produce aisle on wheels, the bus will operate a bit differently as a result of COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead of boarding the bus and choosing items from bins lining each side where seats would normally be located, people will stand in line with pylons marking every two metres to maintain social distancing guidelines. There will be a table where people place their orders and volunteers wearing masks, gloves and aprons will get it for them from the bus.
Cash will be accepted but people are asked to use debit and credit as much as possible, said Jerrott, suggesting “no-contact would be best.”
The bus will now also offer more locally grown items, thanks to a partnership with the Pan Cape Breton Food Hub Co-op Ltd.
“It's an exciting thing for us that we're going to have more local produce on the bus this time around,” she said, adding they're also going to carry staples such as pasta, soup mixes, bread and peanut butter to help people stock their cupboards.
While the Good Food Bus was rolled out as a pilot project last fall to address food insecurity, Jerrott said the overarching goal has always been bringing communities together. Unfortunately, she said, they've found in the last few months there's a lot of stigma attached to the bus.
“People feel that if they have a great job, if they make a fair wage, they shouldn't come to the bus because they might be taking away from someone, or they don't need to get food at a reduced price. But that's absolutely what we want to avoid because it's a community project, it's something to bring your community together, somewhere to see your neighbours, somewhere to go — a fun environment — and you're also getting some fruits and veggies and food for your home.”
In the coming weeks, the Cape Breton-Victoria Centre for Education is helping the Good Food Bus offer everything for free on five different days.
There wull be no charge when the bus parks at its home base at the New Dawn Centre for Social Innovation's renovated convent building July 23 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; the Undercurrent Youth Centre in Glace Bay on July 30 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; Community Cares in Sydney Mines on Aug. 6 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; a yet-to-be-determined New Waterford location Aug. 13 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; and the Whitney Pier Youth Club Aug. 19 (a Wednesday) from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
“We're going to fill the bus with food and people who come can get a couple bags of fresh food and we'll have some other grocery items on the bus as well, completely free of charge,” said Jerrott, adding the Good Food Bus also recently received funding through the United Way of Cape Breton and the federal government to help support its efforts.