When Ebony Yeboah-Amankwah chaired the Akron Heart Walk last year, she was struck by a statistic she heard about the high number of people in Summit and Portage counties who didn’t have access to fresh food in grocery stores.
Yeboah-Amankwah couldn’t verify the figures, but the idea stuck with her: There are a lot of people in the area who live in food deserts. She wanted to help make a difference for them, improving their access to fresh food.
With a $175,000 grant Yeboah-Amankwah just won for the city to bring a mobile market to Summit County, she’s going to do it.
“The most important part is it’s community led,” Yeboah-Amankwah said. “It’s gotten outstanding energy.”
Yeboah-Amankwah is now executive director of the Summit Fresh Mobile Market, a nonprofit that will run the converted-bus-turned-grocery-store. That’s in addition to her day job, as the vice president of ethics, compliance and enterprise risk management at Akron-based Signet Jewelers.
Summit group plans to buy Mahoning Valley market bus
The Summit County program is based on the Mahoning Valley Mobile Market, a collaboration between ACTION and Flying High.
Since Yeboah-Amankwah had the idea to improve access to fresh food locally, that mobile market has visited the city twice as a pilot for Akron’s efforts. The pilots were so successful, Yeboah-Amankwah said, that the nonprofit will buy Mahoning Valley’s converted bus for its own use. (Mahoning Valley plans to upgrade its offering, Yeboah-Amankwah said.)
The 28-foot bus has been retrofitted to have refrigerators and freezers as well as shelves for produce and other goods. Yeboah-Amankwah said the funds the city won from the U.S. Conference of Mayors — where Akron was the first-place winner in the category of medium cities — are seed money to get the program going.
A total of $745,000 in grants were awarded to nine cities nationwide in conjunction with the American Beverage Foundation for a Healthy America as part of the 2025 Childhood Obesity Prevention & Environmental Health & Sustainability Awards.
Yeboah-Amankwah was the chief ethics officer at FirstEnergy at the time the company bribed a state regulator; she ended an interview Thursday when asked about her status in the ongoing case. A spokesperson for the city said she was “fully aware” of Yeboah-Amankwah’s history with FirstEnergy and called her a well-respected and experienced professional.
“Like most non-profits, the Summit Fresh Mobile Market has a board who will oversee the finances of the organization,” spokesperson Stephanie Marsh said in an email. “We’re excited to see how the Summit Fresh Mobile Market expands under her leadership to serve Akron residents in need.”
The mobile market’s mission is to help improve access to fresh, healthy produce options for people who might not otherwise have access to them, said Casey Shevlin, Akron’s director of sustainability and resiliency. Shevlin said without access to fresh food choices, people are more likely to have heart disease or be obese.
“People also deserve access to purchasing and selecting their own groceries,” Shevlin said. “Folks are shocked with what can fit in the food truck. … It’s a grocery store experience.”
Mobile market will target food deserts
The Summit mobile market should be operational in midsummer, Yeboah-Amankwah said. Shevlin said she was “thrilled” that the grocery store on wheels would be able to serve multiple food desert areas, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as places where: poverty rates are 20% or greater; median incomes are at or below 80% of the statewide median income level; or where 500 people or a third of the population is more than one mile from a grocery store.
“I think it’s just a brilliant solution and a brilliant idea,” Shevlin said.
The board is still working on a business plan and details about where the produce will come from, said Christine Yuhasz, the secretary of the board for Summit Fresh Mobile Market. She said the group wants to make sure the truck is sustainable. They’re hoping to work with local growers and vendors to supply the mobile market.
Partners include Church of Our Saviour, Open M, Crown Point Ecology Center and United Disability Services, a statement from the city said.
“We want to make sure we get it right before we try to feed the masses,” Yuhasz said. “We want to make it competitive, for sure.”
In the pilots, residents received a $20 or $25 coupon to help reduce food costs. Yuhasz said she hopes food will be offered for just a little more than it costs. The mobile market will accept SNAP and provide produce, meats, dairy and shelf-stable goods.
The board will also need to find a covered place to keep the mobile market when it isn’t in use, Yeboah-Amankwah said.
She said she intends, at first, for the market to operate for about three hours on Saturdays. It will have a rotation, with at least two locations in Akron each month and others elsewhere in Summit County. She’s looking at the feasibility of taking the truck to an area with a high concentration of senior citizens, too.
Yeboah-Amankwah said she’s considering seeking volunteer drivers and hopes to reach 100 people each time the mobile market goes out. At the first pilot, in Summit Lake, 50 people participated.
The work to launch a mobile grocery store would have continued regardless, Yeboah-Amankwah said, but winning the grant means the market will be available a year sooner than it would have otherwise.
There was a time when getting food out of a truck would have been stigmatized, Yeboah-Amankwah said, but now, it’s an easy solution to help address food deserts.
“Ten years ago, no one would eat out of a truck to save their lives,” she said. “Now, people will wait in a two-hour line.”
