Meta ending food market now that Willow Village has been approved

BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer

Facebook parent Meta is ending a subsidized food market in Menlo Park’s Belle Haven neighborhood next month, and Vice Mayor Cecilia Taylor is trying to find a way to keep the program going at least until the end of the year.

The program, called the Community Moblie Market, allows residents to order fresh groceries and pick them up at Belle Haven Elementary or the East Palo Alto YMCA on every Sunday.

For $10 you can get a “Vegetarian Meal Deal” which includes a dozen flour tortillas, a pound of Monterey Jack cheese, a pound of tortilla chips, 16 oz of salsa and a dozen eggs. For $4.25 you can get a bag with three pears, apples and oranges.

The program, which began in July 2017, the same month Facebook unveiled plans for its massive Willow Village mixed-use project, is ending at the end of October.

The Willow Village project was approved in December.

She and City Manager Justin Murphy got a notification from Meta about the program ending. Taylor and Murphy have been working with Meta’s vendor for the program, Good Roots Farmers Markets and Events, to keep a scaled-back version running until the end of the year.

Mayor Jen Wolosin asked if anyone had contacted Meta to find out if it would continue the program, seeing as how the company has touted that it is a good community partner.

Taylor said she had asked Facebook to continue for the year but hadn’t gotten any response back.

Taylor got the backing of the rest of the council to have Murphy bring back a formal request for the council’s blessing to use money that Facebook and other companies have pitched in for programs in Belle Haven in order to keep the program running until the end of the year.