East Baltimore corner mini-markets serve a vital function, providing residents with access to goods ranging from toiletries to convenience foods. Very few corner stores, however, offer fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy options because they are expensive and difficult for individual small business owners to procure.
Enter the Baltimore Urban Food Distribution app, a smartphone-based tool that connects local store owners to each other and to wholesalers who can sell them lettuce, apples, and other healthy foods at reasonable prices.
“Until now, store owners who wanted to offer customers fresh food had to get in a car and drive to a local supermarket and buy it there—an expensive way to do things that cancels out any profit they might make. The app promises to change that,” says systems engineer Tak Igusa, who worked with project leader Joel Gittelsohn and a team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health on the app’s creation.
1. What’s innovative here?
This is either the first—or one of the first—interventions that engages with a local food system at multiple levels. Though the app links store owners to harness their collective buying power, the ultimate goal is to improve access to healthy food—and positively impact the health of residents—in low-income communities.
2. How was engineering involved?
Food systems seem simple on the surface, but they are actually complex and comprise many stakeholders, from food distributors to corner-store owners to consumers. In engineering, we talk about multiobjective optimization, which means finding the best solution to achieve multiple goals. In this case, we had to consider the interests of the customers, but also that of store owners, and residents.
3. Is it working?
We’re piloting its use now with a small group of store owners, with one doing the driving to get the food. Results are promising. In the future, our goal is to have autonomous vehicles do the food delivery—but one step at a time!