In last month’s issue, I wrote about how Philly could start a City-run composting drop-off program. Unfortunately, the City might not have the staffing to mount such an effort. Forty years ago, when the City was launching its recycling program, it had 23 employees in its recycling office. Today, the Department of Sanitation has two.
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The winter slump had set in for ice cream sales in late January, and Kianu Walker, the force behind Vannah Banana, was dreaming of the summer—picturing himself not on a beach, as many people do, but instead in an ice cream truck. After starting the city’s first Black-owned, vegan ice cream business in 2020, Walker
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Connecting local dining establishments and grocery stores with eco-minded and bargain-hunting customers, Too Good To Go—an app designed to decrease food waste—will be available to Philadelphians starting February 23. Founded in Copenhagen in 2016 and currently available in 15 countries, Philadelphia marks the app’s third U.S. city expansion, following its rollout in greater New York
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Eggplant and beets are not the kinds of vegetables Tanisha Muse typically buys, but through a program offering free produce from Sanctuary Farm in North Philly, they are now part of her family’s diet. “It’s still not my first thought to get beets at the supermarket,” says Muse, a West Philly resident. “That might never
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A decade in the making, the South Philly Food Co-op (SPFC) has opened its doors. Leigh Goldenberg, one of the first 100 member-owners at the co-op in 2011, joined before it had even begun searching for store locations. To Goldenberg, investing in the co-op early on was a commitment to a future vision of a
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Sally Quigley is not a farmer. But today, at a food distribution event in the parking lot of CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, she could fool anyone. She looks down at a table heaping with butternut squash and recalls wistfully how she planted this squash and later got to harvest it. Today, she’s proud to
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When covid-19 hit, Soy Cafe owner Alice Leung was forced to close. It was a stressful time for everyone, especially for small-business owners. However, Leung kept her cool and brainstormed how to support her staff. “We’re still going through it, and it’s such a sad and hard thing to cope with,” says Leung, “But somehow,
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For a week in late October, goats grazed on a broad hill in High School Park in Elkins Park, a stone’s throw from Philadelphia. Friends of High School Park, which has been taking care of the park since 1995 when a fire destroyed abandoned buildings that were once Cheltenham High School, organized the event with
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Callowhill’s new outdoor dining space Gather was designed to sit opposite of current food hall trends. “They’ve become expensive and hip, with well-established vendors,” explains Meegan Denenberg, co-founder of Little Giant Creative, a Philadelphia-based boutique branding and events agency. “At the end of the day, food halls used to be about low barriers of entry,
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With a smattering of bright yellow refrigerators across the city, Michelle Nelson is on a mission to better the lives of food-insecure Philadelphians in light of the pandemic. “COVID has amplified problems that have always existed and made them more prevalent,” says Nelson, the founder of the Mama-Tee.com Community Fridge Project, which established Philadelphia’s first
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Something special happens at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Church Lane every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. A collective of neighbors and volunteers gather in The People’s Lot, with cardboard box cutouts that read “Free Food,” but that’s not all that brings people in. If you travel to The People’s Lot, you will see an
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