Rollin’ Grocer visits underserved communities

One might say that Rollin’ Grocer is going places. In fact, it goes several places every day.

As its name implies, Rollin’ Grocer is a supermarket on wheels that serves communities throughout the Kansas City metro area. The store itself is a 24-foot trailer, complete with refrigerated and frozen display cases, offering about 600 SKUs of grocery products in neighborhoods that are otherwise underserved by grocery stores.

“Finding fresh, available food is a real challenge, and we are trying to meet that need without having a brick-and-mortar store,” said Natasha Ria El-Scari, who oversees community outreach for Rollin’ Grocer and is one of its original investors.

She described the traveling store as a “labor of love” for the owners, who are hoping to eventually become profitable while also providing a needed service to the community. Founder Jessica Royer originated the idea, and she consulted with El-Scari and others for a little over a year before launching the store-on-wheels in March of 2016.

For now, the success of Rollin’ Grocer can be measured in terms of its ongoing expansion to new neighborhoods and the service it is providing its communities, El-Scari said. As of December, the trailer was serving about 32 different stops on a regular basis, making two to five stops per day.

The owners operate under a host of progressive-minded principles, which include buying as much local product as possible and paying all employees at least $15 per hour. The truck was also built using environmentally friendly refrigeration technology, and the company is conscientious about recycling its waste.

“Creating a high level of integrity in what we do has been costly for us, but we really believe that having a small local business, and having a livable wage and having a lucrative business is something that can happen,” said El-Scari. “We know it is a bit idealistic, but we know that it can work.”

In addition to Royer and El-Scari, the other two partners include Jason Kelso, a former restaurant manager who coordinates logistics, and Theodore “Priest” Hughes, a former truck driver who also has a background in organic farming and oversees the meat and produce operations for Rollin’ Grocer.

Rollin’ Grocer gets supplies from a local wholesaler, Pittsburg, Kan.-based Joe Smith Co., which delivers to the grocer’s warehouse in central Kansas City, Mo. The warehouse includes dry, refrigerated and frozen storage, and also houses office space for the company.

Operating the mobile store has been a learning process for the team, which has had to troubleshoot on the fly to overcome challenges such as temperature control, low-volume product ordering and even how to secure product in place on the shelves as the store travels from site to site.

“We’ve had a lot of epic wins, and some epic fails, but we’ve never stopped running the truck,” said El-Scari.

Focus on service

El-Scari said one of the goals of Rollin’ Grocers is to provide a clean, modern shopping experience that mimics the grocery environment that consumers might find in a suburban supermarket. Customer service is considered a hallmark of Rollin’ Grocer’s operations, and each of the 15 Rollin’ Grocer employees is thoroughly trained on how to fulfill this aspect of the company’s mission.

The response to the truck from the local community has been highly supportive, El-Scari said. Some local organizations have even donated to the company, which allows it to pass on discounts to its customers.

Rollin’ Grocer also offers a 10% senior discount every day for people age 60 and older, and a 10% discount for veterans and members of the military. It also offers “flash specials” via text blasts that can be combined with other discounts to earn up to a 30% discount.

El-Scari said Rollin’ Grocer tries to be competitive on price with other supermarkets in the market, and generally marks products up 20% to 30% over wholesale.

“We’ve definitely learned a lot in that area,” she said, noting that it can be a challenge as a small operator to buy in large enough quantities to obtain competitive prices.

Communication with customers in the local communities has been a key element to Rollin’ Grocer’s growth. The company promotes the trailer’s availability tirelessly, reaching out through various channels, including social media and via information tables set up at local community events.

“We have a team that just focuses on canvassing, placing flyers and calendars letting people know we will be in the neighborhood,” El-Scari explained. “The idea is that people will schedule their shopping with us.”

Residential facilities, churches, and community groups are among the organizations that request Rollin’ Grocer’s services.

“It’s really about building trust in communities,” said El-Scari. “Once we go to a new spot, we generally commit for three months, because that’s how long it takes to build trust.”

Although Rollin’ Grocer seeks to include healthy options among its product selection, part of its mission is to carry whatever products its customers ask for, El-Scari explained. When they first got started, the Rollin’ Grocer team took the empty truck to several community events and asked people what they wanted to be able to purchase at a grocery store. Rollin’ Grocer also conducts surveys to determine its shoppers’ preferences and keeps a log of requests made at each stop.

The product mix is always changing as the operators learn what sells and what doesn’t, and what its customers are looking for. The mix incudes both brand-name products and the Best Choice private label.

Critical role

Beth Low-Smith, VP of policy at KC Healthy Kids, a local nonprofit that advocates for access to healthy foods, and director of the Greater KC Food Policy Coalition, said Rollin’ Grocer can play a critical role in low-income areas where access to healthy foods is a challenge. Kansas City, Kan., in particular faces access limitations, she noted, citing the closure this past summer of a Price Chopper there.

“Rollin’ Grocer has worked very hard with Kansas City, Kan., in particular to identify areas where their service is most needed by the residents, and to build relationships with apartment operators or the property managers, as well as with city officials and health advocates to make sure they can operate in the spots where they are most needed,” said Low-Smith.

The problem of access is especially acute for the elderly and disabled in low-income areas, she noted.

Low-Smith said she’s working with a coalition that includes Rollin’ Grocer to ease some of the regulatory restrictions that have slowed Rollin’ Grocer’s expansion on the Kansas side of the metro area.

Kansas City, Kan., has 17 census tracts that qualify for the USDA’s original food desert measure, including more than 44,000 residents, Low-Smith said, citing figures from the USDA Economic Research Service. Kansas City, Mo., is larger and spread out over several counties, but most of the city is within Jackson County, where the city has 21 census tracts that qualify as food deserts, with more than 71,000 residents.

El-Scari said her team would eventually like to expand with an additional trailer, but for now it is still focused on making the first one work.

“We want to make sure we are maximizing out the potential of this truck before we start on the second truck,” she said.