Going into my first day at the Mobile Market, I was feeling quite nervous for a few different reasons. One of the reasons was my inability to speak Spanish as I had heard from other classmates that most of the customers were Spanish-speaking. In addition to that, I had concerns about the overall process of the Mobile Market because I knew it was going to be moving at a much faster pace than the 86th street pantry. With that being said, I also felt prepared for the day due to the fact that I already had some volunteering at the pantry under my belt.
I arrived at NMIC a bit early, so I spent about 15 minutes outside waiting for Caycee to arrive. Once she showed up, we checked in with the receptionist at NMIC and awaited the arrival of both the truck and Uber filled with bread from WSCAH. We actually had some issues with the Uber because it was saying that he arrived, but the car was nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, the manager at WSCAH accidentally sent the Uber to Ira’s House instead of NMIC. Once we settled that issue, set up the truck and organized the line of customers, we found out that three students from a food safety program at NMIC were going to help us for the day. This was definitely a pleasant surprise because I was the only volunteer there, and it was only my first time at the Mobile Market. Giving out the food was very similar to 86th street as they based it off of the same points system, so it was less of an adjustment than I had thought. The time ended up going by extremely fast because of how busy we were, so for this reason, I would say that Mobile Market is a very different experience from 86th street, which takes longer for each customer, but gives them more options for food.
