Giant Eagle’s Mobile Market brings grocery store to Glassport

The facility, which contains more than 750 grocery items, will visit the borough every Thursday.

For the first time in more than a decade, Glassport residents are able to shop for fresh vegetables and a variety of grocery items without leaving their community.

On Thursday, the Giant Eagle Mobile Market made its first visit to the borough in front of Honor Roll Park on Monongahela Avenue. The mobile market is a “mini” version of a Giant Eagle supermarket, stocked with more than 750 grocery items and built into a self-contained trailer.

The mobile market offers a selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, cooler and freezer items as well as canned goods and other grocery staples. The mobile market will visit Glassport every Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

Giant Eagle’s Melinda Gaus was very pleased with the reception the mobile market received, as more than 20 people were waiting for the crew to get the market set up and open for business.

Due to the tight quarters inside the mobile market, only a few shoppers are admitted at a time. The first-time shoppers exited the market wearing big smiles on their faces and carrying shopping bags filled with groceries.

Almost every shopper had the same thing to say about the new service.

“I love it,” said Glassport resident Marie Madden. “I usually have to drive to Elizabeth to shop.”

A resident of the Glassport Senior Citizens Apartment, who declined to give her name, added, “This is a blessing, I don’t drive so I need to get a taxi or ask someone to take me to the store.”

Anthony Colecchi, president of Glassport Borough Council, was pleased with the response to the mobile market.

“Since we announced this program, we’ve received nothing but positive comments from our citizens,” he said. “That almost never happens, somebody almost always has something negative to say, but everyone likes this idea.”

Colecchi has been lobbying Giant Eagle to bring the mobile market to Glassport since he first heard about this service.

“Glassport has been without a grocery store since the Shop n’ Save closed over 10 years ago,” he added. “It was hard on our seniors, many of whom don’t drive.”

The problem was made even worse a little over a year ago with the closure of the Glassport Rite Aid Pharmacy, which stocked bread, milk and other basic grocery items. Colecchi, who grew up in Glassport said, “We used to have a Kroger, a Balsamo’s and several other grocery stores here, but they’re all gone now.”

Glassport is what sociologists deem a “food desert,” an area where the difficulty of purchasing a variety of healthy, nutritious food not only creates economic challenges for the poorest citizens but also has a negative impact on the health of a community.

That’s why UPMC has partnered with Giant Eagle to support the mobile market program. They see delivering this service to local communities with limited access to a variety of healthy foods part of their mission to improve the health of the region’s cit- MOBILE MARKET •A4

“Since we announced this program, we’ve received nothing but positive comments from our citizens.”

ANTHONY COLECCHI

GLASSPORT COUNCIL PRESIDENT izens.

To support healthy eating in the areas served by the mobile market, Giant Eagle sells all its fresh fruits and vegetables at half price and offers special pricing on many other items. Mobile market customers may use credit/debit cards, checks, gift cards, WIC or SNAP benefits to pay for their purchases. The mobile market does not accept cash.

Other mobile market stops in the Mon Valley are Clairton (1 to 2:30 p.m. Thursdays), Rankin (10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sundays) and Duquesne Shopping Plaza (1:30 to 3 p.m. Sundays).

Gaus said the idea for the mobile market came out of discussions about how Giant Eagle could better serve Western Pennsylvanians during the COVID crisis.

The mobile market took two years to design and build, and Gaus called the project “a work in progress.”

“We started with 250 items that were popular sellers in our stores, and now we’re up to more than 700 products for sale in the mobile market,” she said. “We try to listen to our customers about what they want to see us stock. If a customer doesn’t see what they want, they can tell us and we’ll bring it for them the next week. We’ll keep coming back as long as the people keep coming to us.”

To learn more about the mobile market service, visit the Giant Eagle mobile market website at www.gianteagle.com/mobile- market.