Portland State Magazine Fall 2014

26 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE FALL 2014 Amelia Pape MBA ’11 brings groceries into neighborhoods on Molly the Trolley. WR I T T E N B Y HARRY E S T EVE MOVABLE FEAST AT FIRST GLANCE , Amelia Pape’s trolley looks more like a tourist attraction than the potential game-changer it represents for urban food access. But passersby who stop and admire the converted green streetcar and its tempting array of organic produce quickly realize there’s more going on here than a photo op. “This is fantastic,” says Emilio Hererra, a branding specialist from San Francisco who stopped with his wife to buy corn, potatoes and berries while the trolley was parked in downtown Portland for a day. “It’s putting food where people need it.” That’s the idea behind My Street Grocery, a business model Pape conceived and nurtured at Portland State’s School of Business Administration and now is part of the giant Whole Foods Market chain. Pape, who got her MBA from the school in 2011, said she wanted to tackle the problem of “food deserts”—defined as neighborhoods more than a mile from a full-service grocery store. “Food has always been a passion of mine,” says Pape, a soft-spoken 30-year-old with a runner’s build and an idealist’s outlook on how to merge private enterprise with public good. “I want to teach people how good, nourishing food really makes a difference. When you know the joy of food, that’s when your quality of life can be really different.” Pape’s life certainly has been on the upswing. After learning about her mobile grocery store, Whole Foods hired her as its first “food access coordinator” for the Pacific Northwest region, which includes Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Now she’s looking at the possibility of vastly expanding her grocery-on-wheels idea. JUST THREE YEARS ago, Pape was a grad student in Charla Mathwick’s class at PSU, studying how to be an “impact entrepreneur” and unsure of what she wanted out of life. She was struck by areas of the city that had little access to the kinds of fresh, organic fruits, vegetables and other groceries necessary for a healthy lifestyle—food many Portlanders take for granted. Mathwick’s class assignment was to find a market that was being blocked or “disrupted” and come up with a solution. Pape’s thinking went like this: It’s difficult for families in underserved communities to get to where the good food is being sold, which often means they don’t eat well. So bring the food to them. “The goal was to get students thinking about innovation,” Mathwick says, and Pape got it. “She’s just a great example of what I wanted to happen out of that class.” With Mathwick’s encouragement and the help of classmates, Pape, then 27, launched My Street Grocery in 2012. Raising money through Kickstarter, she bought a used Franz Bakery delivery van, loaded it with healthful food and drove it to neighborhoods where families were relying on convenience stores or fast-food chains for many of their daily calories. The business quickly caught on, and Pape worked out deals with hospitals and social service clinics to serve their clients— most of them homeless or low-income—as part of their ther- apy. The clinics would provide vouchers, and Pape would set up shop nearby, sell them groceries and discuss healthy recipes and eating habits. The hours were long and compensation was shaky, at best. “I was in a place where I could take some risks,” Pape says. “No mortgage. No husband. No kids. I was in the right place to take a chance with it.” But within two years, she says she realized she was at a crossroads Her business was attracting heavy interest, but she wasn’t sure how to handle it. “I needed something to change,” she says. “I didn’t know how to move forward. I didn’t want a big check. I wanted a network of resources.”