 As we celebrate the launch of the Tom's Creek Family Farms Mobile Market, it's been a priority for us at the city to seek solutions to address the food insecurities in our community. We recognize that this will take a multi-prong approach and our work is not done with the launch of this mobile market. On a city level, this has taken a collaborative effort to include city leadership, our mayor, city council, our city manager, Ms. Wilson, and the entire executive leadership team. I would also like to recognize our city departments, OBO staff, procurement, parts and recreation, and public relations. Even our utilities office in Columbia Water offered their support to get us to this day. I've had the opportunity to work alongside the Columbia Food Policy Committee and witness firsthand their dedication and commitment to addressing the needs of our community. Our members of the Food Policy Committee, could you kind of raise your hand? Thank you. Can you stand up, please? They keep me on our toes and we look forward to seeing what's next. It really is amazing that we were able to work with the local small business, Tom's Creek Family Farms for this mobile market. We've held countless meetings, Zoom, team, phone calls, text messages, and even a field trip to prepare for this launch. I know that Larry and his team are passionate about providing quality products to their customers and they have some additional ideas on how we can further address some of the health disparities in the community and I look forward to working with them in the future. I believe this market will have a greater impact than we initially expected and we are thrilled to be here and look forward to a continued partnership. At this time I would like to introduce our Mayor, the Honorable Daniel J. Rickerman. Good afternoon. Another great day in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm so excited about what's happening here today. Once again, I want the opportunity to thank the Food Policy Committee who's here. We all stand up one more time because this really was y'all's dream and you pushed and pushed for us to work together. Thank you so much for all of what you have done and obviously our staff, our OBO office, our hero back here, Ms. Driggers who, you know, if you haven't had any interactions with her office, you're missing out on some great opportunities because she just gets you excited just talking with her and I'm so excited that she's also pushing forward. But you know, as we continue to do new innovative ideas, one of the things that Council committed to was how do we address some of the issues in our food deserts and taking innovative steps and working with a local farmer, not only building up their business but bringing these fresh dairy meats, vegetables to our neighborhoods, using our grocery access pilot along with Instagram, I mean Instagram, Instacart. I've been Instagramming this morning, Instacart to bring delivery and subsides, trying different things as we get our way to hopefully get more grocery stores in neighborhoods. But we have to be smart about, we have to build back our density, we have to build back our community so that we can get, attract those grocery stores. We don't want to end up with an empty space like we have in some places that we've had two and three grocery stores in and now it's been empty for five years. So we're going to have to continue to be innovative, support projects like the mobile market here, continuing to have our other small markets out there, but also investing in making sure that we're teaching our future generation how to cook fresh vegetables. You know, not everybody knows that a rutabag is pretty good if you roast it, right? How do you cook collards? How do you take advantage of all the great vegetables and things that are grown right here in our community, working together with the small farmers and working with our local businesses to continue to bring opportunities to our community? One step at a time, one day at a time, but we only can do this by working together. So it takes the community, city government, the staffs and businesses coming together to find the solutions and we're going to continue to do that. With that, I'd like to turn it over to our district one representative, Tina Herbert, the big, big supporter driver for making this day happen and I do have to say it does feel pretty good to be standing on this basketball court that one of our Colombian natives made sure that this community had bested and gave back sitting here on the Asia Wilson court here, which proves that community coming together solves problems. Ms. Herbert? Thank you, Mayor Rickerman and you are exactly right that it's not going to be just the city or one individual or one entity solving the problems that we face in our community. We need the community. We need private folks. We need businesses to come up with collective solutions and it's not going to be just one solution. It's going to take a lot of things working together. We have been waiting a long time for the mobile food market. I am extremely grateful to the Food Policy Council. This initial idea came back in 2017 and I also want to make sure to thank the mayor. We were able to do this because of ARPA funds that we received. Sometimes folks think we have thousands and thousands of treasure chests somewhere, but we don't. So we're very grateful for those funds and it providing us the opportunity to help a small business. We recognize the challenges. We're trying various ways to approach it and resolve them. One of the other things that we've done is we've passed a grocery store license, business license rebate program and so if a new grocery store comes in, they're going to get a 100% rebate on their business license fees. And we also want to encourage current grocery stores and so they are eligible for a 50% rebate in their business license fees. So again, it's not just one thing that's going to solve the issue. It's going to be a collective of things. We're really, really excited about working with Tom's Creek family farms. We went through an official procurement process just in case anyone wonders. How did we? I know y'all are wondering how did we get Tom's Creek, but we put it out. We called it put it out. We put it out on the street and we told folks this is what we're envisioning and we wanted to hear from folks about how would you implement a mobile food market? I was not a part of the process. Were you a part of the process, Mayor? Yeah, we stay out of things like that. But our staff, our procurement staff and our OBO staff, as well as the food policy council work diligently. And there we have, and y'all see it as beautiful, the mobile food market that is going to be run by Tom's Creek family farms. And I don't know if y'all have some of the history because they also have an actual farm. So do you understand how easy it makes them to have access to foods because they own a farm and they have a grocery store? And so it's so much better when folks have a history in the industry, as opposed to maybe just trying out something. So I'm very, very optimistic. Y'all hear that, right? I'm very, very optimistic. I know this is going to be a success. I'm also excited because they'll take all forms of payment, which includes seeing your vouchers and healthy bucks. It is literally a grocery store on wheels. And so if you haven't been there in there, I encourage you to do it. It will be providing services in 29203 and 29204. The city did not choose those. Again, I want to give credit to our Food Policy Council, who has the expertise in this area to help us make these decisions. Finally, I'm just glad to be here, y'all. This has been a long time coming. I want to thank all of the staff, all of the people who made this day possible. I am going to support because, Mayor, you've made reference to some type of vegetable that tastes good if I learned how to cook it. But no, that's the reality. It's also an opportunity to learn how to cook different things and new things. I've never cooked the rutabaga. I don't think my mama would let me know. But that's a great opportunity to taste new things, get new things into your diet. So I'm excited. And I'm accept that challenge to cook the rutabaga. I don't know if anybody else will eat it, but I'm going to try it. So thank you all for coming out here today. Thank you all for supporting us. And I look forward to hearing all of the successes of the food, mobile food market. Thank you. Good morning. And I'm Shawna Cato. I'm the chair for the Columbia Food Policy Committee. And Tina and the mayor have about said everything that I was going to say. But I want you guys to know that the food policy committee is, we are the cheerleaders. That's how I see us in this part of this entity. We've supported from beginning to end, just like Councilwoman Herbert said from 2017 up until now, COVID stopped a lot of things, but this initiative did not stop. I came in later on and we have some folks that were here from the beginning and up until now. And it's exciting to see something start and then see the finished product. I had the pleasure to sit on the council, the group that vetted the applications. I didn't have a vote. I just, expert, I don't know what it was called, but an expert member, I just sat in and listened and looked at the applications. And it's exciting. We may not have gotten 20 applicants, but we got enough. And we got one that came out and was able to produce what we asked him to do. I have had the pleasure this morning of actually going on the mobile market and seeing some fresh vegetables that look like, I just wanted to go ahead and go shopping. And I said, oh, I gotta let the people come in first. So I didn't have, I don't have a grab bag yet, but I want you guys to be excited about this. You have to support. If we don't support, it doesn't stand. And it's for you, it's for us, for our community. We need it. It is so necessary. I live in this area and I don't have access to a grocery store that I can walk to. But look, some people that are right here, they can come right in their neighborhood. They're at the park, they can go shopping. What a great idea. I am so excited for this. I want to see it continue. I wanted to see it expand and grow. I want Larry to call and say, hey, I need more days because the people are coming. So guys supported, we can have to continue these efforts. I believe that the food policy will move on to something else that will tie into this mobile market, like cooking and teaching folks how to take those groceries and cook them fresh so that they are good for our body so we can combat the main diseases that are in our area that are crippling to us. Thank you all for being here. Again, please go shopping today. Pops is going first. Okay. Pops is going first. Hello, everybody. Hello. Mayor, representative, and the rest of the powerful people behind me. Nothing can happen without good team and powerful people behind you who are committed. Larry will talk about the farm and the agriculture side, but I'm going to talk about our role as people who work in the community and who work at the university. I'm a professor at the University of South Carolina. And one of the greatest interests for us is being able to serve the community as a university. And our team, College of Education, Physical Education Department, Arnold School of Public Health, Health Services and Policy Team, our intention is to be out here with the community to be able to work, collect information, disseminate information, and add value to what we're bringing as a physical entity of agricultural products. Now, I also have to thank USDA Agricultural Department, South Carolina Agricultural Department, and the city. For this opportunity, it's an opportunity made in heaven for us, researchers, and also people who like to serve their community. So I'm looking forward to move and expand this to other communities. With that, I'll hand it over to Larry, who will talk more about the chickens and the hogs and the vegetables. Hello, everybody, I'm Larry Schneeberger. So our farmers in Hopkins, we had 174 acres, we do everything from livestock to produce to aquaponics to everything. But first, I want to thank the city with the great team that they put behind me, because, listen, this was countless nights, and I know that she woke up to probably 20 emails one day. But how it all started was, we actually invested almost $2 million in the city of Columbia. We have Farmers Market Exchange on 912 Lady Street. One night, we were in there working and Pops is like, hey, I just got an email. Let's do this. This was like 11 o'clock at night. I'm like, do what? We're building a store. He goes, no, the city put this out, we're gonna do it. We spent two and a half months between building the store and every night, writing our application. There was a team of four of us. It was crazy, it was insane. And then we got awarded. We built this out in three months, right? We got the trailer, kept her up to date. She saw when the trailer got delivered to the house at night. At 11 o'clock, I'm taking pictures. There it is, we're gonna do it. It's gonna happen. We have some other stuff. I'm gonna call him out. Mr. Johnson, our house representative's here. We have a project going in Hopkins together right now, too. He's behind it, totally 100%. We're gonna do some greenhouses and some stuff and we're gonna put his product on there and sell it. So we have a lot of stuff going on. Other than that, on the banners behind us, they're gonna be at the locations. We didn't even talk about the locations, did we? I don't have it. I didn't get that paper. Everybody got it. So, it's gonna be Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays. High at Park, Greenview Park, Edgewood Library. We're gonna add more locations, like they said. It's a trial thing. Just bear with us. I mean, this is brand new for everybody. But we're hoping to add five days a week. If all goes well. On the trailer, meet me at the black table. I'm gonna bring eight of you or nine of you in a time, be to this kind of cramped in there. So we'll do tours and we'll go over it and all that stuff. Anything else? Yes. You ready to do it? Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Well, I just wanted to close out and thank you all for being here. This is a cause that's very near and dear in my heart. Given that it's more than a mobile food market, it's an example of when communities and businesses and city government comes together and finds innovative solutions to health problems that are really plaguing our communities. But the only way that this is going to work, I wanna stress what Councilwoman Herbert said was, we need you to get the word out. We've poured in the resources, we brought together the collaborators, but now we need the community to know that this resource is out here and we'd like to see it expand beyond district one and to all of the city and maybe even the county in parts of lower Richland. And of course, I wanted to also take a moment to recognize two of our state officials that are here, Representative Heather Bauer and Representative Jermaine Johnson, who have been steadfast supporters of addressing food insecurity as well. So thank you all for being here. Please go tell a friend, colleague, neighbor about this amazing opportunity. Now, for not yet in your neighborhood, I will say the Lady Street store that Tom's Creek Farms has opened is wonderful and quite comparable to a lot of those big grocery stores you're probably shopping at. So go support them. Thank you all for being here and we really appreciate it.