“We used to drive around like an ice cream truck, park wherever, and we could get kicked out, but it was a bunch of fun,” says Lindsey Barrow, Jr., founder of Lowcountry Street Grocery (LSG) in Charleston, South Carolina. “Everybody’s into food here, so we have the culture, but local food is hard to get for some locals. For people who actually live and work in the area? It’s really hard.” Barrow is talking about inequity in a city that presents itself as a culinary capital but doesn’t acknowledge neighborhoods where access to fresh and healthy choices is often lacking. In 2015, he first christened “Nell,” an old-fashioned school bus rescued from retirement in a junkyard field. He and some friends sanded off the rust, painted the bus lime green, and retrofitted the interior with shelves scavenged from antique barn siding. Nell now has a new lease on life as a mobile market, serving as the attention-grabbing outreach of a social enterprise whose mission, according to Barrow, is bringing “produce to the people.”
Nell is a direct link to the mobile food network that existed in Charleston for centuries. Shortly after the Civil War ended, emancipated vendors seeking financial independence peddled produce in downtown Charleston—men pushing handcarts filled with fresh-picked fruit and vegetables or coastal seafood caught by the city’s Mosquito Fleet, women carrying candies and flowers in handmade coil baskets balanced atop their heads—all chanting huckster songs to entice customers. This daily delivery system faded with the arrival of refrigeration and the rise of self-service supermarkets.
Today’s grocery delivery apps lack the same character and agency of vegetable pushcarts and watermelon trucks. Relinquishing the agency of picking ripe fruit to an anonymous stranger has its own set of frustrations, but that pales compared to solving the problem for shoppers with limited access to the internet or phone apps in the first place, let alone reside in an area where such deliveries exist. Food equity also continues to be problematic for those who lack a paycheck that keeps pace with rising grocery prices. In neighborhoods where the only option is a dollar store, fresh selections tend to be missing from their aisles. Most offer pre-packaged, shelf-stable food items with negligible nutritional value, and while some bargain chains are venturing into produce, such as Dollar General’s new DG Market brand, these stores push the definition of what is actually considered fresh. Bacon-flavored “farm fresh” canned green beans are a far cry from what Barrow and the LSG team procure from regional farmers for their “neighbors who need it most.”
Nell has two alternating routes, operating four to five days a week, which covers multiple urban neighborhoods, including North Charleston, Folly Beach, Daniel Island, Mount Pleasant, and Wagener Terrace. Some are designated priority markets to service fresh food-insecure areas, but all customers are welcome to board the bus in every location. Before going on its weekly rounds, the bus is loaded at the LSG warehouse headquarters in West Ashley, a suburb of Charleston, where staff accept deliveries from producers, break down bulk orders into customer-friendly portions, and coordinate drop-offs with outlying health clinics—from Walterboro in Colleton County to Cross in Berkeley County—that serve as hubs for distributing groceries in rural Lowcountry communities where it’s even more difficult to source fresh food on a consistent basis.
On a recent Tuesday morning, Nell parked in front of the Keith Summey North Charleston Library as participants in GroceryRx, an auxiliary LSG healthy food initiative, shopped after attending a nutrition-focused session that ended with samples of Marsh Hen Mill stone-ground grits. (GroceryRx is a multi-week dietary education program with cooking demos, a walking club, grocery store field trips, and classes on managing health issues.) Inside the bus, a vintage Ideal cooler was filled with sweet Carolina peaches, and wooden Pepsi crates displayed hot sauces, honey, bags of butter beans, Murasaki sweet potatoes. Radishes are always available because Barrow, who studied philosophy and political science at the College of Charleston, likes the implicit wordplay they represent. (Radish and radical have the same Latin root: radix, which means root.) Internally, LSG staffers gleefully refer to themselves as members of the Radish Family. More pantry items stay cool in a refrigerated display case—Fairy Tale eggplant, collards, purple muscadine grapes, Red Creole onions—sourced from small-scale farms such as Spade & Clover Gardens. “We try to save farmers the added aggravation of markets,” says Barrow. “And that lets them do what they do best, which is growing food.”
All groceries onboard Nell are marked with two prices—one for customers who can pay full price, and a discount option that kicks in when a customer is trying to stretch paychecks. (SNAP/EBT recipients automatically qualify for the lower rate.) This is the Robin Hood effect in action: those who can afford it help subsidize others who may be struggling. A handwritten cardboard sign advocating the principle of “N2N” (neighbor to neighbor) aid hangs above the cash register.
Standing in the stepwell to assist an elderly customer with her basket, Barrow explains that Nell was named for a favorite aunt who died young. “She just wanted to connect people and bring everyone together at the table.” Katrina Figueroa, a GroceryRx participant, fills her basket with eggs, mushrooms, and curly kale. She’s also something of a LSG healthy living booster. “If it wasn’t for them, I would not be here right now, and I’m grateful. Believe it or not, two weekends ago, my grandsons had me playing soccer and football in the yard.” She gives Barrow and Olivia Myers, founder of GroceryRx, hugs before leaving. Myers lifts Figueroa’s bags.
“Our staff walks groceries back to people’s cars because we intentionally believe that service is more important for people who are underserved,” says Barrow. And next year, Nell will welcome a baby sister, a converted ’92 Thomas mini activity bus Barrow recently found in North Carolina. Expect a name reveal party soon.