Community Food Environment Mapping: Mobile Vendor Census

Overview of Mobile Vendor Census. The Mobile Vendor Census tool is designed to assess the types and quantity of mobile vendors that sell food in a community. It is one of three community food environment mapping tools included in the Food Environment Toolbox that can be used either in combination or standalone. After identifying a thoroughfare or key location where mobile vendors will enter or exit the community, the enumerator(s) positions themselves for a predetermined time period to conduct an observational checklist for all the mobile vendors that pass by. This tool provides insight into the types of mobile vendors in a given community, the availability and quality of food sold, and its promotion. The tool is informed by the Environmental Profile of a Community’s Health (EPOCH), and the Multisectoral Food and Nutrition Security Project (MUSEFO) surveys (Chow et al., 2010; GIZ, 2020).

To assess the mobile vendors that consumers have access to, and the availability and quality of food sold and promoted within them.

You should use this tool if the community you are working in relies on mobile vendors for food access. The Participatory Mapping tool included in the Toolbox can inform whether or not it is important to capture mobile vendors as part of your research.

A census of all mobile vendors that are selling food in the community over a specified time period.

The mobile vendor census captures the external food environment as well as capturing information about the built food environment.

The mobile vendor census assesses the food environment dimensions of food availability, promotion, and quality.

An enumerator completes the observational checklist for the mobile vendors.

Observational checklist for each mobile vendor

Descriptive statistics related to the mobile vendor types, the food they sell, and the food they promote can conducted with the data obtained from this tool. Indicators related to the proportion of “healthy” and “unhealthy” food groups can also be calculated.

This tool can fill gaps in data related to the retail food environment my capturing an important source of food for many populations and it is relatively easy to administer.

It can sometimes be difficult to identify the best place for the enumerator to station themselves for data collection, sometimes vendor drive by quickly making it difficult to capture information about the foods they’re selling and promoting and keeping track of the vendors that pass by the enumerator multiple times can be challenging. We provide ways to address these challenges in the instructions.

Chow, C.K. et al. 2010. Environmental Profile of a Community’s Health (EPOCH): an instrument to measure environmental determinants of cardiovascular health in five countries. PloS one, 5(12), p.e14294.

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). 2020. The Multisectoral Food and Nutrition Security (MUSEFO) project Cambodia.