Is a mobile fresh-fruits-and-veggies vendor in a city's so-called "food desert" a good idea?

Madison is full of grocery stores, but it has a neighborhood that that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has labeled a "food desert," because there's no grocery store within walking distance. There was one, but it closed, for whatever reason. I'd imagine most people drove to that one anyway, but now the people in the area have to drive (or bike?) to do their grocery shopping. So now the owner of a campus area grocery story comes up with the idea of "a grocery store on wheels called the Freshmobile."

Something like this...



... but with a jaunty instrumental version of this. And you can just picture the desert dwellers running after it waving dollar bills, can't you?

Ald. Brian Solomon, 10th District, represents the Allied Drive neighborhood [says] “I know a lot of people in Allied that want to eat healthy food, they just don’t have access to it"...

According to Mayor Paul Soglin, the city’s vending ordinances are “not designed to encourage this kind of activity.”

But they're changing the ordinances. And the Freshmobile guy (Jeff Mauer) has "raised most of the $125,000 needed to buy the trailer, truck and equipment thanks to grants from local foundations and donations." So Mauer has all this free publicity for his downtown grocery store, people are changing laws for him, and giving him thousands of dollars to tool around town in a mobile billboard for his business... which will presumably make it all the more unfeasible for a real grocery store to want to open in the area where the old one closed.

[Mauer] said the nonprofit Freshmobile Initiative can provide low overhead costs that would help keep food prices low.

You have to know how to work the "green" liberal minds of Madison, Wisconsin. Throw enough buzzwords at them — nonprofit, under-served, affordable, access — and no one will think about your carbon footprint.