New candy trucks coming to Cherry Hill
Mobile stores stocked with essentials are mainstays of the South Baltimore community considered a food desert
By Dillon Mullan
A pair of new convenience stores are coming to Cherry Hill.
Candy trucks — mobile convenience stores stocked with essentials — are historical mainstays of the South Baltimore community, which is in an area that’s considered to be a food desert. In other words, the neighborhood has few to no convenient options for securing affordable and healthy foods or access to nearby grocery stores.
Saturday afternoon inside a garage in Port Covington, a contractor finished wrapping a new candy truck in purple and black to be ready for business in Cherry Hill this summer. A menu on the side window advertised bread, cooking oil and laundry detergent, as well as candies for 35 cents apiece. They used to be a penny. “This is nostalgic. When we were growing up we had these. We used to go through them right before school for penny candy. If you had 10 cents, then you could have candy all day long,” said Chenire Carter, who grew up in Cherry Hill and is now director of community and experience for real estate development firm MAG Partners.
MAG Partners is developing Port Covington into housing spaces, offices and retail. As part of their contract with the city to do so, Carter explained MAG Partners has a memorandum of understanding to commit $135 million to South Baltimore neighborhoods and community projects, like the candy trucks.
The trucks will be managed by nonprofit Cherry Hill Strong, which already supports three other candy trucks in the neighborhood. Cherry Hill Strong surveyed residents and found 88% said candy trucks are essential businesses, selling food as well as toiletries.
“This becomes the Royal Farms or the Wawa for a neighborhood that wouldn’t be able to get that offering,” Carter said. “Most of the city you’ll get a liquor store before a convenience store.”
Carter said the trucks will be parked in fixed locations, with a second new truck ready for wrapping by the end of the month.
“These are a stop gap. This is not the same as getting a Whole Foods, but it’s tangible. it’s something we can do, we know its unfair, we know they deserve more, what can be done, that’s the moral of the story. If we can prove there’s no theft and this is how many people come through, you know have concrete data then maybe a [MOM’s Organic Market] can come through or another smaller offering. We may never get a Giant, but we could get something.”
According to the most recent city data from 2018, about 146,000 Baltimore residents live in food deserts.
In December, Pigtown’s lone walkable grocery store closed. Then in March, emergency SNAP benefits expired, cutting $82 a month in food for 700,000 Marylanders and stretching food banks.
Michael J. Wilson, director of nonprofit Maryland Hunger Solutions, said he worries the cut will lead to more grocery stores closing from a loss of that revenue and larger food deserts, which is especially dangerous in the summer when students lose access to school meals.
“It really is a systemic issue that impacts not just low-income consumers but entire neighborhoods, and it’s about to get worse,” Wilson said. “We know there is a learning gap, but there is also a summer nutrition gap, particularly for low-income kids.”