The City Harvest Mobile Market Makes a Stop in Bed-Stuy

The City Harvest Mobile Market made a stop at Bed-Stuy’s Sumner Houses on Park Avenue and Marcus Garvey Boulevard Wednesday afternoon, to give away bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, along with healthy recipes to area residents.

City Harvest is a food rescue organization that collects excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms, and then delivers it, free-of-charge via bikes and trucks to food programs across the city.

Each mobile market day provides between 8,000 and 18,000 pounds of produce to the community. City Harvest officials said they've been making deliveries at the Sumner Houses location twice a month since the program started.

Today’s free farmer’s market-style distribution took place in concert with Union Square Hospitality Group Founder Danny Meyer and 12 volunteers from Gramercy Tavern and Maialino – two of the company’s restaurants – who helped residents select and bag their food.

Up to 200 households were able to choose from a variety of vegetables and fruit, including onions, potatoes, carrots and strawberries. Bags are weighed and distributed according to the size of each household. The line of local residents waiting for a fresh bag of produce extended outside of Sumner Houses’ front courtyard and down Park Avenue.

This year, City Harvest will collect more than 30 million pounds of food and deliver it to some 600 community food programs. City Harvest helps feed the more than one million New Yorkers that face hunger each year.

To learn more about City Harvest and their next Mobile Market stop in Bed-Stuy, visit their website.