Lately, buying locally has become a growing trend as people seek to skip the supermarket as much as they can and support their communities amid the pandemic. In what’s expected to boost this trend even further, a Canadian entrepreneur started an initiative that’s bringing the local closer to the consumer.
Toronto entrepreneur Frank Sinopoli has just launched Grocery Neighbour, a fleet of trucks that will each operate like a supermarket on wheels, bringing people fresh produce to their streets — making it a great way of enabling people to get their groceries more easily and safely these days.
Sinopoli says it can hold a lot of food: “It’s bigger than a lot of neighborhood groceries.” Because it is going to different parts of town, it can be stocked with different products for different ethnic areas. It can also be used to serve “food deserts”. Sinopoli says he has been asked to visit small towns and even trailer parks.
“We’ll have the technology to tell you when it’s pulling up, or to notify you to where the grocery truck is,” he says. “It will be like the ice cream truck when it pulls up: it will create that type of experience.”
In the current environment, but also beyond the days of social distancing, Grocery Neighbour seems like a good idea that could benefit older people and those working from home with no time to get to the store.