After Good Food Markets stopped vending groceries last November, the closest store where residents living in D.C.’s Bellevue neighborhood could get fresh produce and canned goods was over a twenty minute walk away in Maryland.

Bellevue is home to several thousand people who live more than half a mile away from a grocery store or supermarket. On top of that, many do not own a car and struggle to afford alternate transportation options. So when Curbside Groceries started parking its bright green truck three times a week outside Good Food Markets (which only sells prepared food now), things started to look up. Curbside Groceries is a mobile grocery store that Capital Area Food Bank created just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I was trying to get in this neighborhood. I’ve been trying for the last three years to get here,” said DeJuan Mason, who manages Curbside Groceries and is a resident of Ward 8, where Good Food Markets is located. Ward 8 only has one full-service grocery store east of the Anacostia River, a Giant that’s two miles away on Alabama Avenue Southeast.

The D.C. government reached out to Capital Area Food Bank when Good Food Markets, which received local dollars to develop the Ward 8 brick and mortar, stopped selling groceries. Good Food Markets and Capital Area Food Bank were already partners, exchanging notes on daily operations because they shared the same mission — to provide access to healthy food in communities where there are fewer options — according to Philip Sambol, the executive director of the nonprofit behind Good Food Markets.

Curbside Groceries rolled in just before the Christmas holiday. The truck posts up Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, selling everything from seedless grapes to potatoes to canned tuna. The mobile grocery store accepts cash, credit, debit, and EBT cards.

“We’re not Whole Foods. But we are also not Discount Mart, which is really what I tell people,” said Mason. “This is the greatest idea that no one’s heard of.”

On Wednesday evening, Curbside Groceries had two customers in two hours, including chef Darrell Gaston of Kitchen Savages who sells Southern comfort food out of Good Food Markets. People walking by occasionally stopped by the truck to learn more, and Mason would be ready to offer a brief prepared speech and flyer. At least one person who lived nearby promised to return the next week.

The flashy truck caught the eye of Bellevue resident Timothy Duncan as he was heading to his apartment right next door. Duncan had actually been returning from the grocery store, as evidenced by his black shopping cart, which had been filled with Gatorade and various meats.

“So what did you already buy today? You don’t have fruits and vegetables,” Mason told Duncan as she peaked in his cart. She started to name items they vend, and he agreed to get white potatoes, pears, bananas, and green tomatoes. He was especially excited to learn they sell green tomatoes, saying he’ll eat that for dinner. He hadn’t intended to purchase fruits or vegetables that day but he figured he should buy something from Curbside Groceries.

“If you don’t use it, it’s going to go away,” said Duncan. “So I figured let me use it, so maybe it’ll stay around a little longer.”

Duncan doesn’t have a car, so he said he’d taken an hour-long multi-bus ride to Safeway to pick up a few items. He said he doesn’t mind the long trip because he is a patient person. But he doesn’t go to the grocery store often because he has severe arthritis.

“It’s real convenient,” said Duncan of Curbside Groceries, “because I could just run out of the house and get what I need. I don’t have to worry about trying to travel somewhere in pain. Like I’m in pain right now. But it’s okay. I just deal with it.”

Bellevue is a new location for Curbside Groceries, so no one was surprised to see so few patrons. But Mason says the mobile grocery store only sees a dozen or so customers at its other locations in D.C. and Prince George’s County too, who are mostly repeat customers.

Good Food Markets in part closed the grocery-side of its operations after experiencing the “lowest gross profit margins we’ve ever had in our history” according to Sambol. Grocers have opted against entering communities east of the Anacostia River because they don’t know if they’ll break even, let alone become profitable, says Capital Area Food Bank CEO Radha Muthiah. She says the immediate goal of Curbside Groceries is not profitability. Instead, the organization chooses to have other short-term goals, Muthiah says, including busting the myth that people living near or below the poverty line do not want to consume nutritious food.

“Ever since curbside has been on the road, a top seller every week has either been a fruit or a vegetable,” says Muthiah.

Curbside Groceries is only sustainable because of public or philanthropic funding. Capital Area Food Bank has given the project a runway, says Muthiah, noting the community needs to learn of Curbside Groceries and the team on the truck has to be better understand the needs of the neighborhoods they serve.

“Our hope down the road is to be able to spin this off to an entity, a group of entrepreneurs, maybe even some of the big grocery stores who decide they want to have multiple means of being able to to reach their customer basis,” says Muthiah. “The food bank was just there in the early years to prove this concept that people will buy good, nutritious foods that could result in better health outcomes.”

Back at the truck, Mason gathered her team Gerald Williams and David Walker to strategize how they can get more Bellevue residents on board with Curbside Groceries. She already planned to canvass the neighborhood, as well as talk to the local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners. But the group weighed how they better broadcast other food they sell like chicken, spaghetti, and ground turkey.

“While our display is always beautiful, we just need to elevate to the next level,” Mason told the team. “The gentleman who likes green tomatoes, is that the first thing that he sees? So he knows that he’s heard and taken care of.”