Many neighborhoods across Philadelphia face a real problem when it comes to food access, an observation quickly made by Eli Moraru and Alexandre Imbot, winners of the 2022 President’s Sustainability Prize.
“There’s, what, four corner stores? And there’s chips, soda, cans of peas. And that’s all you can spend [food stamps] on,” Moraru said. “You ask the kids, ‘What did you eat today?’ ‘Oh, I had a Hot Pocket for dinner. And I had Doritos and an Arizona Tea for lunch.’ And these are kids who were playing basketball, you know, five hours a day in the heat, in the cold.”
With the current policy for food stamps and food subsidies, shoppers cannot purchase anything hot or prepared with the intention of on-premises consumption.
This sparked a new solution: The Community Grocer (TCG).
Born from a team of Moraru, Imbot, and faculty mentor Akira Drake Rodriguez, an assistant professor in Stuart Weitzman School of Design’s city and regional planning program, TCG is an empowering model rooted in education and health. The Philly-based project reimagines the corner store, where customers can purchase pre-portioned, fresh ingredients and then have the meals prepared in a community kitchen run by a grassroots nonprofit. The store will be located at 60th and Walton Ave in West Philadelphia, once it opens.
Moraru, Imbot, and Rodriguez sat down to discuss how TCG came together.
“Your Stories: The Community Grocer.” The Community Grocer’s creators and Penn alums, Eli Moraru and Alexandre Imbot, sit down with Akira Drake Rodriguez, associate Penn professor and The Community Grocer faculty mentor, to discuss how the project has reinvented the way Philadelphia residents on food stamps can access healthy meals.
With funding from Penn that helped get their project off the ground, TCG is reimagining nutritional access so that Philadelphians can live stronger, healthier lives.
“For the first time ever, legally and in full compliance with policy, our neighbors … can have access to delicious, healthy, nutritious, empowering meals,” Moraru said.