Episode 93: Kanbe’s Markets Makes Fresh, Healthy Food Affordable to All
About the Podcast
Clancy speaks to the founder of Kanbe’s Markets, Max Kaniger, about the importance of integration of processes within our food system and how we must innovate to rapidly provide fresh, affordable, healthy food to all. As we act, we must ask deep, burning questions to get to the root of this problem and put the community’s voices at the forefront.
About Max Kaniger
Max Kaniger is the Executive Director of Kanbe's Markets. They’re bringing fresh, healthy and affordable food to low-income neighborhoods where it is lacking in Kansas City, Missouri.
Discussion Takeaways
- Kanbe's Markets helps small businesses, like corner stores or bodegas, have access to and sell produce at affordable prices. Kanbe's Markets sources produce, provides in-store shelving and refrigeration, assists with initial merchandising, and gives sales advice to their partners. Their underlying goal is to make healthy food easy and fun for all. By supporting their various markets in this way, Kanbe's Markets reduces the barriers for entry for their stores and is in charge of the quality of the produce and price.
- Kanbe's Markets currently works with 42 stores across the city.
- Their major sources of produce include wholesalers, donated foods that would have gone to waste, local farmers, and avenues to attain imperfect produce.
- At their centralized kitchen, cooking in-house enables them to recycle, compost, and eliminate food waste.
- Food justice is about putting the people they serve at the forefront of their work.
- Max tries to price toward what people can afford versus what Kanbe's is paying.
- The goal is to make Kanbe's Market’s work a replicable and scalable process. They do want to move across the country. There are a lot of moving parts to remaking the food system, and they’ve learned so much while doing so.
- As Max’s nonprofit grew, a mobile food truck came to his warehouse. Kanbe's Markets was able to source fruits and vegetables that were then turned into meals at more affordable prices. Now, the Market makes the food out of a central kitchen at really affordable prices for the community and is also able to support the labor and processing that went into the food.
- He serves people what he would eat himself. During the podcast, he remarked, “If you wouldn’t buy the food, then it shouldn’t be on the shelves.”
- Kanbe's Markets is changing the food system, but they need your help. There is always something that you can do.
#1 tip to improve access to healthy food
It’s important to look at where we are wrong, so we can improve processes and help each other become better.
Each week on the Food Dignity® Podcast, the Food Dignity® Movement's Clancy Harrison hosts a wide variety of hunger experts and other people making changes on the frontlines. Join us as we dive deep into conversations that will change the way you think about food insecurity.
Listen to our trailer!
Want to learn more about how we might work together?
Fight hidden hunger by becoming a
Food Dignity® Champion and take the HIDDEN HUNGER PLEDGE >
