The Lexington Mobile Market has been on the road for six months.

It's a collaboration between the city of Lexington, Kroger and God's Pantry Food Bank to get food to people in areas with very few grocery stores.

And after six months, sales have doubled.

In 2020, the Racial Justice and Equality Commission made a recommendation to to the to the mayor and the council and our community to improve food access and healthy food options.

And we're doing that with dignity with the mobile market.

We knew the mobile market would be popular even so, its performance has surprised us.

Over a six month period.

This is November through May, sales increased from a total of $5384 to $10999.

As a state, we have a quarter of a million people who struggle with food insecurity every day.

That's over 17 17% of our population.

One in four of those are children.

With the mobile market, we aim to put a dent in those numbers by providing an avenue to nutritious and easily accessible food directly to our neighbors where they are.

With the steady rise in the cost of groceries, one way the mobile market can help reduce what can help is to reduce transportation costs and burdens for those who may not have reliable transportation or must take public transportation to get groceries.

Currently, it has 22 active sites where it makes a combined total of approximately 60 stops each month, Tuesdays through Saturday.

We contacted folks like Kentucky Refugee Ministries, and we know some of the neighborhoods and communities where our sites are located or where we've proposed to put them.

And so we were looking at some of the ethnic groups and think we want to have foods that were friendly to very different backgrounds and things like that.

So it's items that they would have.

So it's a place anyone can purch This mobile market is a way to address insufficient nutrition, improve general health, address childhood obesity and provide nutritious meals, especially in the summertime when our schools are closed.

The mobile market is stocked with 300 different items, and schedule can be found online at God's pantry.

Dot o RG.