(mellow guitar music) - So sustainable is a big question.

I think you could ask a lot of questions about, is our food system sustainable?

How we subsidize things, what we choose to invest in, they're really values decisions.

So the idea that food access needs to be supplemented by nonprofits is really just a decision about how public policy dollars get invested, how expensive food is, what wages look like.

And so it really is this interesting question of sustainability, of what we invest in.

- Food access, it's not just isolated to your economic situation.

It's a little broader than that.

If you live in a place where there's no grocery stores or retail food outlets, also, if you have mobility issues, you have limited mobility and there's no like reliable transportation, all of those things affect your food access.

- The Twin Cities Mobile Market absolutely was a response to kind of a gap.

And the major gap is that there are neighborhoods especially in urban areas that simply do not have access to a grocery store.

Twin Cities Mobile Market is innovative in that, it's an approach to take healthy foods right to people.

If the question is does Twin Cities Mobile Market break even by food sale?

The answer to that is no.

We, as a nonprofit wouldn't need to exist and grocery stores would actually be doing that work.

- I think at an individual level if we can get more families growing and small community gardens whether it's public spaces or lots in neighborhoods we've seen truly transformative impact that that will help promote the ecosystem and healthier consumption.

- And then it's also important to have community buy-in, if you will.

So like use this space, have the knowledge and the tools to actually use the space and enjoy it and like it.

- Coupled with that, it's a great way for my co-entrepreneurs to get started.

And so I think rolling it up to a larger infrastructure capacity building is something that can continue to create its sustainability.

- Investing in better, more equitable access to food is critical.

There's a lot of different ways to do that and they can be done at various levels.

I think at the federal level, some of them are the most clear cause those can be some of the biggest barriers in kind of the food system, but at the local and regional level there certainly are solutions as well.

- In order to continue to sustain a program I do think it's really important to have multiple partnerships, whether that is government, private foundation, non-profit donations.

Then what you're saying is that the community matters and the multiple people will then show up for the community at once.