The 2024 Hale ‘Aina Most Innovative Farm-to-Counter Is Now Rolling
Kalihi’s Roots Café has sold affordable farm-fresh lunches and produce for years. Now, it’s bringing that freshness to the valley’s kūpuna.
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After a decade of feeding the Kalihi community, Roots Café + Food Hub has taken its farm-to-counter concept to the streets. Its Rolling Roots truck—a mobile produce market that brings fresh produce to kūpuna and other underserved communities in Kalihi Valley—rolled out this past spring.
Supplying the valley with farm-fresh food is the guiding principle of the Roots program, part of the nonprofit Kōkua Kalihi Valley. At Roots Café, chefs and volunteer cooks make healthy plate lunches that highlight Pacific Island starches like kalo, ‘uala, ‘ulu and cassava, as well as local produce and proteins from Island ranches. The café and attached food hub—a small farmstand that showcases the season’s offerings—are weekly constants open for a few hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they require people to go to them.
As part of a federally qualified community health center, Roots organizers asked themselves what else they could do to achieve their goal. Their answer was a mobile food market. With a truck, they could take their farm hauls to the tables of the most vulnerable.
The program has been hosting pop-up produce markets with the truck at KKV’s Gulick Elder Care Center since May. A sort of community block party, the pop-ups have become so popular that Roots director Jesse Lipman says he is collaborating with Kalihi schools and community organizations to make Rolling Roots markets a more regular part of Kalihi life. Reaching and engaging the community is crucial, Lipman says, and the produce truck lets his team reach people where they are.
“We knew that getting out into Kalihi was essential,” he says. “This truck functions as both a storage unit and a distribution facility, while becoming the face of our work. It is wrapped in images of favorite Pacific Island foods designed by Kalihi artist Cory Taum. When we roll up, open the awning and break out the produce, it becomes an event. It’s like we’d already planned the party, but now the DJ is showing up.”
Open Tuesday and Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., 2229 North School St., rootskalihi.com, @rootskalihi
