Football and Food Carts

February 2, 2012
Urban Gardner

Laurie Tisch is going to the Super Bowl, but first she had to pick up some vegetables in the Bronx. "Thursday I'm on the friends and family charter," she reported. "Hopefully I'll make it there for the friends and family dinner," hosted, she said, by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay.

Ms. Tisch's family are co-owners of the New York Giants, though she may be better known for her philanthropy around New York City as head of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Foundation. Its efforts include supporting the NYC Green Cart Initiative, which brings fresh fruits and vegetables, sold on sidewalk carts, to the city's underserved neighborhoods.

Or at least Ms. Tisch was probably better known for her good deeds than her connection to the Giants until the team won the NFC Championship game against the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 22. If you happened to see the game, or rather the postgame locker room ceremonies, Ms. Tisch was the person in the corner of your screen ecstatically waving some sort of Giants victory banner or T-shirt from the trophy presentation podium.

"The minute the game is over they come out with the hats and T-shirts," she explained. "Some player said, 'You want to get up there?'"

I asked her what the response had been among friends, who were probably more familiar spotting her on the society pages than among tattooed football players. "Several friends said, 'What did your mother say about you in the locker room with these naked guys?' She said, 'Good for you!'" Ms. Tisch replied.

"Body fat isn't a big worry of these guys," she observed, apparently closely. "The entire team has less body fat than me."

Reducing body fat and raising health in the city's low-income neighborhoods by increasing the availability of fresh produce is the Green Cart Initiative's purpose. The carts operate in what are sometimes known as "food deserts"-areas of the city where there is no problem finding a McDonald's or a KFC, but a fresh apple is another thing.

Indeed, both McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken had planted their flags near the bustling intersection of 149th Street and Third Avenue in the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx, where I met Ms. Tisch on Tuesday afternoon. There was also a doughnut shop and a pizza parlor; the Green Cart we were visiting there, manned by Jose Cosme and his wife, Eva, felt like a good-natured rebuke to all those kids stopping for a greasy slice on the way home from school.

There didn't seem to be much crossover between the pizza and produce buyers-no one seemed to be topping off their slice with a piece of fresh fruit-but Mr. Cosme said that business is decent with good weeks and bad weeks. "It pays the bills. I have two kids in college. It has helped," he said.

I've frankly always avoided buying my vegetables from carts, suspecting their sources. But Mr. Cosme purchases his produce daily at the Hunts Point Terminal Market-as do the 215 other active Green Cart permit holders in the Bronx (there are over 500 citywide) and where many of the city's grocery stores and restaurants also go for fruits and vegetables.

"4 a.m. Monday," he said, referring to the time he arrives at Hunts Point. "5 a.m. the rest of the week." He gets to his spot at the corner of 149th Street between 8 and 8:30 a.m. almost every day of the year, weather permitting, and remains there until 4 p.m. during the winter and 6 p.m. in the summer.

The vendors either rent or purchase their carts, and buy all the produce they have for sale. But the Green Cart Initiative does provide them urban retail survival training, and the handsome green NYC Green Cart umbrellas that let customers know they're fully licensed and that their quality can be counted on.

"We make clear upfront this is a sales position," explained Cassandra Flechsig, a Green Cart program manager with Karp Resources, a food-industry strategic planning group under contract to the Initiative. "I lead a lot of workshops: how to select a good location, engage the community, merchandise your product."

Indeed, there is an argument to be made that food bought from the carts may be as good or better than that purchased in supermarkets, and most probably cheaper—though the point of the program isn't to compete with stores but to bring produce to neighborhoods where supermarkets are often few and far between.

"The community does like it," said Mr. Cosme. "I have a lady who comes here once a week on the bus. She doesn't like the fruits in the supermarket. She'd rather spend the $2.25 coming and going. I have people coming from 138th Street."

I can attest to the cart's quality. I bought a Red Delicious apple the size of softball for 50 cents. And Ms. Tisch, who can afford her peaches and pomegranates from Eli's, or Grace's Market, said she also buys her fruits and vegetables from carts.

But what about avocados? There is nothing quite like a perfectly ripe Haas avocado. But how often can you go to the supermarket and find them? The ones they sell, while undoubtedly edible at some point in the distant future, are typically hard as rocks.

"They have got to be ripe," Mr. Cosme said. "When I buy, I buy in quantity. I leave them in the box until they get ripe and them I bring them."

Sadly, he'd sold out.

Ms. Tisch's Illumination Fund provided the seed money for the Green Cart Initiative, the city authorizing 1,000 new street vending permits in 2008 —though not without significant pushback from businesses who saw them as potential competitors. The fund also underwrote a NYC Green Cart Cookbook, which vendors can give away to customers, and financed "The Apple Pushers," a documentary that highlights five Green Cart vendors and the extraordinary challenges they've faced in gaining even a tiny sliver of the American dream.

Ms. Tisch's own dream at the moment is for a Giants victory come Sunday and to make sure she ends up celebrating in the correct locker room. She confided that after the Giants win over Green Bay on Jan. 15, and wearing a Giants headband and her 2008 Super Bowl Champs ring, "I followed this whole big group of people," into the Green Bay locker room. "It was so quiet. I see a lot of green and yellow and think, 'I don't think I'm colorblind.'"

Someone suggested she use her visibility—if she gets the opportunity to do another trophy presentation T-shirt waving victory dance—to promote the Green Cart Initiative. "Whatever they hand me—apples, I hope," she said. "Maybe when they do the victory parade we can get these guys to do the food."