AGISLE: Every Food Business an Aisle

Agisle is a project from Themilklabs that seeks to diversify and expand where your community can buy groceries, giving more people more convenience, flexibility, and better access to healthy fresh foods and pantry goods.

During COVID-19, we saw food businesses pivot toward grocery sales to help meet the needs of their communities and bring in revenue to support their employees.

I imagine a future where this service continues and expands to form a community-wide ecosystem of "agile aisles." These Aisles are not meant to be full-service grocery stores. Rather, Aisles are local businesses that provide some staple foods retail or wholesale from their menus to meet a neighbor's immediate need for fresh foods in between shopping trips. In this way, they are more like a corner store, but add value because the fresh produce and foods are managed by a business that specializes in food: everything from safe food handling, storage, preparation, menu ideas, and fulfillment.

"Aisles...provide some staple foods retail or wholesale from their menus to meet a neighbor's immediate need for fresh foods..."

Restaurants outnumber grocery stores 20 to 1, and are often located in low-access areas. If you're a food business, think about how you can use your existing infrastructure, food handling experience, pick up and takeout options, and long-standing interest in your community to become an Aisle for community good(s). What can you offer? Let us know here or here.

"Food Businesses: What can you offer?"

My goal is an Aisle within 1 mile of most households, or within half a mile of households where 33% of the population have no access to a vehicle. This could go a long way toward reducing "food deserts," but this potential impact still needs to be studied.