Ivy League institution Cornell University sits atop East Hill in picturesque Ithaca, New York and churns out intelligent doctors, engineers and scientists each year. But many of their students are hungry.
Cornell is a food desert, meaning there is no supermarket within a one mile radius of the campus, which makes it very difficult for students without a meal plan to access healthy and affordable food. A 2016 Cornell PULSE (Perceptions of Undergraduate Life and Student Experiences) survey found that one in four Cornell students skip meals due to financial constraints. The traditional meal plan, which includes 14 meals per week, costs $2,962 per semester.
In 2017, a group of Cornell students identified campus food insecurity as a major problem. They weighed options of how to attack the multifaceted issue and decided to open Anabel’s Grocery, a student-run store located on campus.
“We want to provide a space and a community for people to have accessible, affordable and nutritious food, as well as learn how to prepare and eat that food,” said Nicole Lee, Anabel’s Director of Store Operations.
The store, located in Anabel Taylor Hall, purchases food at low prices from local distributor Cortland Produce Inc. Anabel’s passes those savings onto customers. Anabel’s also collaborates with Dilmun Hill Student Farmas much as possible to provide locally-grown produce.
“We’ve gotten donations and worked out deals with other agricultural groups on campus. We’re very creative in our search and we’re really limited by a lack of purchasing power,” said Devon Rosen, Anabel’s Director of Communications.
Rosen and her colleagues offer special programs to tackle the lack of knowledge about nutrition and cooking, which are effects of food insecurity. Around the store you’ll find recipes and ideas on how to use the food available for purchase. Anabel’s also hosts cooking classes.
It’s the customer interaction that let the Anabel’s team know that their store is making an impact on Cornell.
“We had one girl who came in and started crying because she was so happy that she could finally access this type of food,” said Rosen.
Anabel’s serves over 2,000 customers on a regular basis.
“When I just need something in the middle of the week I stop by here and get it really quickly…because the meal plans are super expensive and Ithaca is super expensive, I think having an affordable option right here on campus saves transportation money and the money you would be blowing at an overpriced store,” said Cornell sophomore Angela Li.
Anabel’s team recognizes that it won’t solve food insecurity on Cornell’s campus alone so it collaborates with other organizations at Cornell to fight the problem.
“We were the first project to kind of draw attention to the need. But since then there’s been a lot of other developments around campus in order to address the project in different ways,” Rosen said.
Cornell graduate students have started running a mobile food pantry in partnership with The Food Bank of the Southern Tier.
“We’ve been able to get the conversation going about food insecurity at Cornell,” Rosen said.
Anabel’s Grocery will open again next semester and is planning new initiatives. You can check their website and Facebook pagefor hours of operation.
