Root Scoot - Touchless Fresh Produce
*Photo was taken on an empty street with no one within 20 yards of the rider to avoid risk of infection
How can a bike-drawn mobile produce market combat COVID-19 and food deserts?
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic around the world, we started working on a project to help people avoid crowded grocery stores (and the risk of infection), and serve food deserts with the fresh, and fully sanitized, produce they sorely need.
The bike-drawn pilot is part of a much bigger vision of helping food deserts access fresh, healthy food. It involves partnerships with those communities, local food producers such as urban and small, local farmers, and even cities themselves. The learnings from this pilot will be used to inform the pathway to that vision, coming directly from users and the community.
Finding new ways to engage with the community
The risk of infection is changing the way community engagement and design research around problems like groceries is being done. We used platforms like NextDoor and Google Forms to gather valuable (if limited) feedback on the problem
We created a prototype app to get feedback on the concept of a mobile fresh produce market, ideas on how the commercial aspect would work, and to hear what people would change about it to make it more enticing to use.