 Welcome back. We are thrilled that you found your way here at the nonprofit show. Our welcome to the nonprofit show is this is your first time joining us. We're glad that you're here. Today we have with us, I guess, that I am thrilled to have a conversation with, thrilled to learn more about the service you provide, Frederick LeForge, CEO and founder of the Farmers Truck. And he's here to talk to us about how you might want to consider reaching clients with a mobile produce market. So stay with us. Frederick has a lot of information to share. And I'm also excited to share a little bit about how we came about to get you on the show because not sure if you're aware of that, Frederick, but I'm gonna share that in just a moment. I wanna say thank you to Julia Patrick. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Thanks to Julia. We're coming up on nearly 900 episodes. And I am honored to serve alongside day in and day out as the co-host. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. As I mentioned, nearly 900 episodes. For those of you that have joined us and our local, or sorry, loyal viewers and listeners, you've heard that number before. And so we are so honored to have the continued support from our amazing presenting sponsors and partners. So thank you so very much to our friends over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University. Thank you also to Staffing Boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. These are the companies. Many of them, in fact, probably most of them have been with us along this 900 episode journey. So a huge shout out of gratitude goes to all of them. And it was so much fun because those of you that might have joined us Monday and Tuesday, I was in Nashville broadcasting the show live and got to have some great conversations with our friends, both from Bloomerang as well as fundraising academy. And it's just so great to see our colleagues in person and have that real life energy and vibration going on. Hey, I mentioned how many episodes we've produced. And again, if you missed any of them, are you like what Frederick is going to say for you and your company and your nonprofit, you can find us in just a couple of hours. This live episode will be uploaded onto all of these platforms, which include your broadcast, your podcast, and then you can also download that app. So if you're watching right now, go ahead and pull out that smartphone, scan the QR so that you can upload the nonprofit show and you'll get that notification. All right, well, that is the intro, my friends. So Frederick LeForge, thrilled to have you here in the hot seat, as we call it. Frederick, you are the CEO and founder of The Farmer's Truck. Welcome to you. Hi, nice to be here. Yeah, I am so glad you're here. Would love to pass it over for you to share with us a little bit about yourself. But as the CEO and founder, tell us how The Farmer's Truck came about. So The Farmer's Truck is kind of a crazy story. So back in the day, so my background is in design, product design and branding. And then this gentleman walked into this conference. We met, he's a young farmer and started talking about his endeavor, bought a farm and wanted to, you know, basically get out of his day job and start farming. And I thought this story was so inspiring. So I started picking away at his business model and bringing his product to market was a challenge. And so I'm like, okay, can you talk with Farmer's Market? Are they open to have you? They're like, oh, it's quite busy. So next thing you know, we came up with the idea of a mobile market, something that he could bring along, park on the side of the road. And the idea of Farmer's Truck came to be. And that was in 2014. Fast forward to 2015, we launched a program. 2016, we launched a second program. 2017, we launched an online store. And then we got some challenges and we figured, okay, what do we do with everything we've learned? How do we help other communities to launch these things? And that's where we pivoted to empowering communities with the Farmer's Truck, which is what you see behind me basically. Yeah, that is a fantastic story. I love that. Years ago, I was working with a nonprofit in South Carolina along the coast, actually in Charleston. And they were doing a lot of work to bring crops and harvest from farmers into the local downtown community for restaurants, for individuals, like really looking at how do we go from truly farm to table, but without waste. And so I cannot wait to hear more about Farmer's Truck with you, Frederick. Let's get into this. I wanna say the meat and potatoes because I feel a better jargon phrase to state here, what exactly are food deserts and then what are the impacts of food deserts? And then thirdly, how does the mobile truck that you provide impact this, right? The desert as well as the impacts of the food desert? So the definition of food desert takes different measurements. So there's a different way to measure food deserts. And I think the community is starting to get away from the word desert because desert means that it's kind of naturally occurring, which most of the time it isn't. And so people are moving from that to something more called like a food swamp, which is more typical in an urban area where there's more fast food than there is fresh access, nutritious food, and a rural area where there's been a lack of investments or economic activity. And next thing, people are leaving that area, the grocery store closes, and that creates a food deserts. And sometimes they also refer to it as food apartheid. So the impact of food desert is really around nutrition. And so if you're a family, an individual, and you live far, maybe don't have transportation or lack of access to public transportation, your nutrition options are quite limited. And next thing you know, you're feeding yourself off a gas station or a convenience store. And that's really where it starts to affect your health, which turns into basically the impact on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, all that stuff that's all really based on diet. And also it brings around the concept of what they call social determinants of health. So food is a big part of that. And about roughly 30 to 40% of the cost of healthcare is diet related basically. So. You know, I love that you bring up, we're moving away from the language of a food desert, looking at the swamp and all of these other terminologies that go along with that. You know, as I look at this and I shared with you, you know, I live in a metropolitan community, yet there are certainly scarcity or scarcity neighborhoods when it comes to food, let alone, you know, food that is affordable as well as nutritious. So that takes me to what I feel is this justice, food justice, as well as building, I'm gonna insert the, you know, that word building healthy communities. What does that look like and how are you helping in that realm? I mean, it's the basic concept that every individual should have the option and the opportunity to feed themselves nutritious food. And so empowering communities, basically that's been disenfranchised or marginalized to have these programs. So food justice and the definition is really the pursuit of a fair and equitable food system that ensures that all individuals have access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. And so a lot of these programs that what they'll do is also price the food with dignity. So no matter your financial situation, you should have the dignity to be able to buy your own food, which is really the big stigma around food accesses. I mean, we're individuals with feelings. Food is obviously a big part of our life. We eat all, you know, we need to eat to live, but how we eat and how we procure our foods often makes an impact on our choices. And so, and I have a really good story I can tell about that if you want. Please do, I'd love to hear it. Well, so I was, you know, we spent our days working and empowering community leaders oftentimes their food banks. And so we worked with nonprofits to launch these programs. And I have this executive director who's an executive director at a food bank. And she said, when I was a kid, I didn't really understand that we were food insecure and we were a challenge. But I know that when my mom, when we would get a box of pasta out of the cupboard and finished a box of pasta, she would say, you know, close the lid and put it back in the cupboard. Because if we have guests over, they won't question if we're out of food or not. And that really hit me like that's the dignity part that we don't really take for serious or we ignore often when it's not just a distribution access, it's not just a physical access. It's how do we provide dignity so people can feel great about eating healthy? That is such a touching story. And, you know, you had mentioned food along with community and culturally, you know, culturally sensitive or appropriate food. Talk to me more about that because I know in so many cultures, food brings people together, right? Like that is the gathering place, often the excuse to bring people together. But if we don't have access and we don't have that dignity, that I feel also Frederick is going to negatively impact the connection of our community, right? And really like just how truly cohesive we are. Can you speak to us about that and the impacts of that? Well, I can tell you about the impact that mobile markets are having on the communities, on these marginalized communities. And one that comes to mind is a story out of Sacramento. So there's a program running out of the Center for Land-Based Learning in West Sacramento. They have an urban farm. And basically they use the mobile market to go serve communities that don't have access. It happens in not too long ago. There's a lot of refugees from Afghanistan that relocated near Sacramento. And for them it was difficult to get appropriately appropriate food. And so when discussing, when they were serving them, they're like, oh, do you have this type of produce? Do you have, they were able to turn around, go see their farmers. Hey, would you be able to grow something like this? And then next thing you know, they're basically it's full circle. So that's what a regional food system, the power of a regional food system is. It's the healthiest you can get, it's the freshest you can get, the most nutritious you can get. And also it brings agency so people can work together, collaborate, help each other. That's the beauty of these types of programs. Oh, sounds like so much beauty. I love the urban farms. I love the farming connection, right? Like literally taking it from the farm to the plate, to the table. You mentioned pricing. And I wanna say it was in the previous kind of like talking point, but I'd love to go back to that pricing because you mentioned Sacramento, where else are their farmers truck, that you've helped to implement? And how does that pricing vary from community to community? So farmer's trucks are right now, we're coast to coast. So we work from Brooklyn all the way to Hawaii. We have mobile market programs running in the mountains, to the desert, to Louisiana, for example. Price with dignity is the concept that, so it depends on the program. So we have programs running, for example, in the Central Valley in California. For them, they're trying to address the issue with farm workers that are spending their whole day harvesting food, they go home hungry, which is crazy. But yeah, and or they'll also host a WIC program. So women and children, so they'll have diapers and baby formula. So it depends on the program, but the idea of bringing this market to you with dignity, so you get to choose what you're gonna eat, so there's choice, applies to many different programs, but most of them they will charge for the food. And the idea with charging with the food is what type of experience do you want them to leave with? Do you want them to feel like, hey, this is a free program for poor people and I took advantage of it. Most people don't want that. They want dignity. The experience we want them to have is, hey, I got two bags full of fruits and vegetable for 10 bucks and I'm going home, I got the deal of the century and they're coming back next week and I'm gonna be here. That's the feeling we wanna give. Oh, that sounds amazing. So when you say they come back next week, the trucks that you've helped to implement from coast to coast, which I love that, is it a consistent schedule or does it really depend on the community and the community needs? Because I can imagine if this is basically my local market and I'm waiting for every Tuesday or twice a week, what does that look like by way of schedule? So most program will do human-centered design or community-centered design. So they will apply if they're serving a community, for example, that oftentimes low-income communities will work multiple jobs, will work different hours. They're not doing the nine to five. So based on the community they're serving, based on the availability of the community and their feedback, they will schedule a stop that makes the most sense for them. In most cases once a week, preferably twice a week, but that's typically the type. And so they'll park either two to four parking a day. So in a week, they can serve 10 to 20 different communities. So from a brick-and-mortar store type of model to a mobile market, you basically have 10 to 20x the impact. Wow, that is so inspiring. I love hearing these stories. I'm sure you have plenty of success stories and every time you say, can I tell you the story? I'm always like, yes, I wanna hear it because I really do like hearing the impact of this. Talk to us a little bit more about this, how it works. So any of our viewers and listeners, and they're saying, okay, Frederick, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Like I love what you're sharing and what the market helps to provide. How exactly does this produce market work, right? So if there's an organization that says, we could really benefit and our community could benefit from this, what is it like from A to Z? What is the process entail? And so, okay, so I'll tell you about how the process and how we empower these community leaders. And then I'll tell you a bit more about how these programs usually work. And so we look at it holistically. Our mission is very clear. It's fresh, accessible food in every community. So the mobile market is one piece of the puzzle. We're looking at refrigerated containers for pickup locations, all kinds of different methods that would matter aligned for a rural area versus an urban area or whatever. But essentially, nonprofits will reach out to us, will figure out and even do a needs assessment with them or understand their situation and what they're trying to do. We will help them fundraise, we'll help them write grants, we'll find grants for them, we'll teach them how to do their program. We're working on a mobile market training program. We're working on tools to help them measure their impacts. We can report back on their funders. Basically, holistically, how can we empower them to be balancing financial sustainability and social impact? Because that's really the goal. If we, you know, we can give away food all day long, but it's not a long-term fix. If we wanna make these programs sustainable and here for years to come and actually address the problem for good, it needs to have sustainability. And so that's why we preached the social enterprise model. So typical mobile market programs, they will do 10 to 20 sites a week. They will bring focus on fruits and vegetable, which is what's usually missing in these communities. Protein is easy to freeze, but some of them will bring protein, some of them will bring dry goods, whatever they can find that's affordable. They will also bring some local products but also imported products. At the end of the day, price is a big issue if you're trying to make things affordable. So you need to balance your approach. These programs can run very efficiently because it's the way the truck is designed. You can handle it with a single person, but usually they'll have an operator and they'll have a volunteer that joins them for every site. The volunteer is usually the community ambassador. So their responsibility is to bring the community to the truck. And like you were saying, food brings people together. It does, yeah. So their job is really to share the gospel of good food, to celebrate where we're going to. And the first question when they get to the truck is like, hey, what are we cooking today? That's it. Like what are we cooking? And what's in season? Let's talk about it. Yeah, so the engagement is really important. That's why the truck, the way it's designed, it's designed like a farmer's market. So you are facing the customer, you have this chance to engage and oftentimes these communities that are marginalized or especially seniors who are lonely and dealing with solitude, this is their social for them. So. Do you find from the local communities that not only are the community members coming to get the food, right? What are we cooking for dinner tonight or what are we having tomorrow? But they're coming for the camaraderie and the socialization. Like they're coming, as you mentioned, the loneliness, they're coming to connect. Are you seeing that? And then also, what does that look like from a near social connection standpoint? Well, so when you position, so depending on how they position the program, we like to position it like a farmer's market. Farmer's market are something that excites most people, whether you're poor or rich, you're excited to learn what their farmers grow around you, what their story is, what's available, what's the good deal. So farmer's market are also a social event, right? So you show up to support your community, but at the same time you get to see who's there and there's this social interaction. So bringing that experience on wheels is really kind of the idea here. And I think the most impactful story is really around seniors. And I mean, they will come and buy like two, three, $4 worth of produce, but they'll stick around for the whole time. They'll just like hang around and talk to people and they love it. So it brings more than just food. It brings, you know, community, I guess. That is so great. We have a question that's come in from one of our viewers and I think it's appropriate to ask it now, which is how are the trucks designed, Frederick, with a refrigeration element to keep the produce cool as well as fresh? What does that look like from the design standpoint? So we have two different designs. We have one design that's a passive cooling system. It's designed for produce. So it's just really to extend the life of produce. It's not necessarily good for protein or dairy or things like that, which require a specific type of temperature and the mechanical refrigeration is really the only way to get there. For us, the first truck that we designed was all about affordability. We know that we were going to serve food banks. The cost was a big issue. And so our first design is basically this fridge that we designed with ice packs, these large ice packs, and it's got fans that blow their around and it refrigerates a ton of food for the whole day. And that was our first truck. And then our new C model that we're launching soon and we've been, have a lot of customers interested in officially launching soon. That has proper mechanical refrigeration. You have a freezer in there and it all runs on lithium battery. So when you're parked, you're not creating any emission. You have enough energy on the box to power for your whole day, your hand washing sink, your hot water, everything you need to do food literacy activity, which is often something that happens with these programs but to keep everything fresh or frozen depending on how you set it up. And we also have that the entire box is refrigerated. So when you're parked, you don't need to unload the truck. You can just plug it in, keeps everything fresh and then the next day you're good to go. It sounds like you've thought of absolutely everything and I am still a little floored. How holistically you support these organizations from the fundraising standpoint, the grant writing standpoint, how many trucks do you have in communities right now? And then what is your goal looking forward? The next year and the next five years, what does that growth model look like for you and the company? So right now we have about 40 programs that we've helped launch or are just about to launch. Each program will serve roughly about 500 families a week. And so that's about 20,000 families a week right now that gets served with mobile markets. Our ultimate goal, which we're aligned with the Biden administration on ending hunger and nutrition disparity by 2030, we're hoping to launch 2000 programs and serve a million families a week. And so to get there, we're talking with different partnerships, we're talking with healthcare payers, we're talking with the vehicle providers, we're trying to see who would align with us to get to our mission. And if we can get there, I think the impact is gonna be pretty significant on the healthcare costs and community, health outcome and all that stuff. Well, as you mentioned, it really does impact that those social determinants of health. And nutrition and what we put into our mouths, ultimately our bodies really impacts so much longevity of our health, longevity of our communities, our connections of others. I'm gonna put you on the spot and you can certainly tell me a range, but I'm curious, as a nonprofit, if we're interested, what does that US dollar amount essentially look like? Are we talking 50,000, 500,000? What is kind of that range that we could expect if this is a program that we wanna consider? And so we're working with a financial partner to rent these trucks, so this is in the work. So we're gonna make it even more accessible. Because we do fundraising with nonprofits, we noticed that nine times out of 10, the funder do not allow you to purchase a capital equipment or a piece of equipment. So rental is really the best way to empower them. And we're looking at taking on actually some rental ourselves to acquire trucks ourselves and put it out there for the smaller organizations who typically don't qualify for funding. So even remove that barrier as well. Our trucks will range from $37,000 to $200,000. It depends on the options you put in there. We really make sure that it's a good fit for your program, that it meets your requirements. And we're always innovating. So being a product designer myself, I have like five years worth of design yet lined up in front of me, picking what we can chew on as we go and what we can work on. But essentially our plan is to grow the demand, get to economies of scale and lower the cost even more for the truck and make it as accessible as possible. Yeah, this makes me think also, what is the longevity of the program? Do we need to commit to three years, five years, one year pilot? What does that commitment look like? I mean, the question would be, how long does the community needs help? And I don't think there's a timeframe on that. I think if that community, I think the best case scenario is you start serving that community and then a private entity sees potential and then jumps in and be like, you know what, I'll reopen the store here or I'll open the store here. Then you've actually went. Then you can move your mobile market to another location and try to serve another. Because really it's not, it will be probably the main program for some communities because there's just not gonna be enough demand for a grocery store to step back in. But the ultimate goal is like, mobile market would not exist in the perfect world. We wouldn't need it. That's right. And that's what I love so much about nonprofits. We exist to provide a solution to a community problem. And what if we could solve that problem, right? Like what if the trucks weren't needed because there were no more food swamps or deserts or the changing vernacular, that would be a great problem or solution to the problem because therefore we know our community members have truly been fed and they have the nutrition, the healthy food that they need to fuel their lives. And so kudos to you for all of this. Tell me a little bit about your team as we go to wrap up the conversation because I would love to hear more about your team, Frederick, of who's here to help? And are you all in Canada? Are you also in the US? What does that makeup look like? We're global. So we have people in Canada and Portugal and Argentina. We have people in Philippines. We have people in the US we work with. So our core team is in Canada. That's where the company was founded but we have a US entity and this is basically where most of our activity is happening right now. We're a very, very small team. I think our hiring process is what I'm most proud of which is hire for the soul and train for the role. And so we need to find people that are aligned with our mission, that cares about what we're trying to do because we're trying to move mountains. We need people that care. It's not just about a job, it's more than that. So we try to find these people and I think we did a pretty good job. So that's really the team that we have. Hire for the soul, is that what you said? Train for the role. Correct. Beautiful, I absolutely love that. And I promised in the beginning, I was going to share how we connected. I actually received an email from someone in your company. I was serving as an interim development director for an organization that does have food insecurity as part of their mission to provide food to the community. And when I got the email from your colleague, I immediately said, more people need to know about this. I want to get you on the show. I want to have you talk about this program, the opportunity and truly this conversation. You, again, I'm just floored how much help and support you provide the community. So I took that inquiry email and flipped it because I was like, I want to learn about it, but I don't want to be selfish. I mean, wanted to learn about it and certainly could have been, but I knew there was more to the story that I wanted to help get out into the community, Frederick, because what you're doing is so needed. I myself have found myself on needing support. It was about 13 years ago, on food stamps, on women, infant and children support, being one of those recipients of food boxes, being one of those recipients of needing healthy food for my family. So Frederick LaForge, an honor to have you here, CEO and founder, the Farmer's Truck. For those of you watching and listening, please check out this company because I think you will be just as amazed as I have been in this conversation. Thefarmerstruck.com is where you can find Frederick and we now know his global team. So an honor to have you here. We could talk, I could talk to you for much longer. I know sadly we're only scratching the surface, but I just wanna say thank you for seeing this opportunity and approaching it with so much gusto. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Yeah, absolutely. Well, for all of you watching and listening, it has been a great honor. Like I said, I knew that I wanted to have a representative from the company on had no idea it would be the founder. So even more of a gift. So thank you to Julia Patrick, American Nonprofit Academy for creating this beautiful platform. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, just really privileged to serve alongside all of you as we move mountains in this world. So shout out of gratitude to our sponsors that include Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, as well as Nonprofit Tech Talk. These companies are here for you. They wanna help you also move mountains. I love that you said that, Fredrick. That's such a great quote. And I use it often to say for children, let them sleep for when they wake, they will move mountains, right? Like there's so much that's going on in our world. But hey, with that, again, thank you for those of you that might have joined us Monday and Tuesday, I was live in Nashville at the Raise One Cause Conference. Today honored again to have Fredrick LaForge joining me. Tomorrow and Friday are actually holidays for Julia and myself. So we are going to take a pause on the show Thursday and Friday, but we hope you'll join us back Monday next week. And as we sign off every episode, we invite you and encourage you to please stay well so you can do well. Thank you so much, Fredrick. It was wonderful. Pleasure.