Prosperity Market Enriches Small-scale Farmers and Local Food Businesses in LA Region
The Issue
In response to systemic food insecurity and economic instability in Black America, exacerbated by the pandemic, Carmen Dianne and Kara Still
launched Prosperity Market in 2020 to be a solution that strengthens the local economy, supports Black farmers and food businesses, and provides healthy affordable foods to communities that need it. Prosperity Market is a mobile farmers market featuring Black farmers, food producers, and chefs. They travel throughout LA bringing a curated farmers market experience directly to neighborhoods. Their goal is to make it easy to support local, black-owned businesses while creating food access for everyone.
Our Response
As a Southwest Regional Food Business Center (SWRFBC) partner in the LA region, Prosperity Market has developed a farmer and producer membership program that will give their farmer network access to retail and wholesale opportunities, marketing support, funding opportunities, and other business resources and support.
Prosperity Market’s vendors are small-scale farmers and local food businesses. Prosperity Market provides their vendors with market access via Prosperity Market’s mobile farmers’ market system. The mobile farmers’ market system includes a solar-powered and electric trailer that goes from neighborhood to neighborhood offering up a selection of locally grown produce and prepared foods. With the support of the SWRFBC, technical assistance is also provided by Prosperity Market to help vendors scale up their businesses and to connect with other local supply chain and/or retail businesses.
To support with marketing, Prosperity Market is also implementing a content strategy, posting and sharing about their vendors/products available on socials and through their newsletter. They have also tested various types of text message outreach with their customers. Since implementing these strategies, they have seen increased customer engagement and market sales.
Our Impact
The vision of the SWRFBC and their LA region partners has been to have a network and a space where people in local food systems can find each other and have a centralized location for business support resources. In materializing this vision, Prosperity Market has added five new vendors to their farmer and producer network and identified 15 more prospective local food vendors. In addition to their farmers’ market on wheels, they are exploring new restaurant and institutional markets that will provide more opportunities for their farmer and local food business network.