Funded Partner Spotlight: PeliCAN Program
This year, the Foundation and Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital awarded the City’s Healthy St. Pete program a $250,000 Healthy People grant to support their PeliCAN program, which seeks to bring affordable, healthy produce into South St. Pete neighborhoods while simultaneously supporting the launch and development of small mobile businesses.
PeliCAN is modeled after and informed by New York City’s Green Carts program, which issues permits to mobile food vendors to sell fresh produce in areas where access is limited. It’s also informed by the City’s 2024 Healthy Food Action Plan, which sought resident input on food access and what it would take to improve it.
PeliCAN officially launched in September with an initial group of four mobile produce vendors. During the program’s first three months, the vendors will focus on building up their businesses with coaching from St. Pete Greenhouse and Florida Central Credit Union. Healthy Start will help them acquire City and state permits to sell whole, uncut produce in neighborhood areas and become EBT-certified to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits; vendors will also each receive a Fresh Start Mobile Market cart through the grant.
As early as late November, PeliCAN vendors will begin selling produce in the South St. Pete neighborhoods where access to healthy foods is most limited, whether by geography or economics. Working with City staff, vendors will use feedback from a resident survey to plan their routes and schedules and purchase inventory to ensure they meet resident demand and avoid competing with each other.
“The program is modeled on a decade-old program with academic research behind it, so we’re able to understand its strengths and weaknesses and plan for them. The reason we know it will fit with our City’s needs is we asked local residents what good food access looks like to them, and they told us neighborhood produce carts,” explained program manager Sarah Weimert, adding that residents most frequently cited transportation, affordability, and local availability as the biggest barriers to healthy food access.
During the 15-month duration of the PeliCAN program, PeliCAN vendors will receive funds to purchase wholesale fruits and vegetables from Eighty Deuce Produce. They’ll set public-facing sales prices in partnership with the City staff to ensure residents can afford them, and vendors will keep all proceeds from their sales as profits. In the final months of the program, vendors will begin the process of transitioning to purchase produce and set prices themselves.
Vendors were chosen from a group of 24 applicants in part based on their commitment to PeliCAN’s mission to improve access to healthy foods in South St. Pete. Each of the four selected applicants expressed a desire to serve as a “food access point” for neighborhoods where food access is limited, Weimert explained.
Throughout the duration of the PeliCAN program, vendors will meet monthly with staff to collectively troubleshoot any challenges that arise and track the program’s success. Data gathered through the PeliCAN program will serve as evidence to support future planning and zoning changes to make it easier for small vendors to sell fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods where healthy foods are scarce.
You can learn more about the program and complete a resident survey on food access via the PeliCAN website.