FreshFood Trucks Co. (24A)

This innovation would attack a lack of access to fresh, healthy, and convenient foods and food sources. Its purpose is to change this in order to fight rural health disparities. Other factors including health literacy also play a part in these disparities, which would not be impacted by this nonprofit. This innovation would help people living in food deserts in rural counties. However, people that never leave their house would not be able to access the portable farmers markets as they would be at particular events. Additionally, since there are so many churches in several Florida rural counties, I would have the markets often form there. If people do not attend these services, they would not be able to access this particular one. Differing underlying causes could be a lack of education, choice to live a rural lifestyle, live on a farm and have access to ingredients

I believe the type of person that would benefit most from my product is someone from a rural county. After speaking to several people from nearby rural counties including Bradford and Levy counties, both of which are only approximately half an hour to an hour away from UF. I found that most interesting because of the abundance of options we have so close to campus compared to food deserts in rural counties only a short drive away. I have recently taken a trip to Levy county for my introduction to health disparities class, so I was familiar with the options or namely the lack of options for affordable, accessible healthy fruits and vegetables, but it was very interesting to hear about what it was like to actually live there. My interviewees in the past have described rural life as a simple one, with only a few convenience stores and what seems like more churches than houses. They described the landscape as very open with sometimes miles of space between houses. 

After conducting various interviews for this project I can conclude that there is definitely a need for more accessible and affordable healthy options in rural areas. It would be important to establish a proper schedule for the portable farmers market in order to ensure accessibility for the ideal consumer. 

My ideal customer is proud to live in their rural town: a low income, small town family, that frequently attends church and enjoys the simplicity of their day to day life. My customer probably lives in a small family, possibly two or three kids, maybe homeschooled. Politically they are probably more conservative as they live in a rural area and are quite religious. They probably watch the news and focus on more local events as they are very in tune with their community.