A steady stream of families, older adults and working professionals pick out groceries on tables outside a bright blue van, grabbing everything from fresh tomatoes to eggs in the mid-morning Los Gatos sunshine.
They joke with each other, look at recipe lists and chat about new products like Cinnamon Toast Crunch waffles. But this isn’t a typical farmers market or grocery store — all the food is free and often unlimited for anyone who needs it.
Homelessness and hunger nonprofit West Valley Community Services recently launched its newest “park-it market” outside of the Los Gatos Library at 100 Villa Ave. to expand its services to residents struggling with the cost of food. The market — a refrigerated van that carts hundreds of dollars of groceries — parks outside the library every second and fourth Thursday of the month between 10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. Shoppers don’t have to meet any requirements to get groceries from the van, which Sutter Health funded with $180,000.
West Valley Community Services expects to serve about 500 households with the Los Gatos van and other vans it has used to run park-it markets in San Jose, Campbell, Saratoga and Cupertino. Advocates said the new van could help fill a gap left by an anticipated $186 billion in cuts to federal food assistance programs over the next decade, due to the passage of the H.R. 1 known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Donald Akimoto, manager of mobile operations for West Valley Community Services, said he’s seen a slow but steady increase to about 30 shoppers at a time since the van started serving Los Gatos last month. He said everyone’s seen the federal news, but residents are still hesitant to seek food assistance because of the stigma despite being house-rich and cash-poor. The nonprofit serves 350 households in the town through programs outside the market, including rental assistance.
“If we can send people home with usually $50 to $100 worth of goods, that’s more money they can put towards other things, whether that be taking care of some home repair or going to the grocery store and not having to buy food but maybe… cleaning supplies,” Akimoto told San José Spotlight.
Los Gatos resident George Aza has become one of the market’s frequent shoppers. He’s returned three times to save on food costs because he and his wife are retired and live on a fixed income. He helps his son financially, and said every little bit helps.
“It helps everybody,” Aza told San José Spotlight. “I don’t care what your dollar’s worth, you come here and get something because right now the economy’s tight.”
Aza heard about the market through the Live Oak Senior Nutrition Center, which provides free or cheap lunches Monday through Friday for about 90 older adults. The program also provides groceries Monday through Wednesday, but it’s restricted to people older than age 60, and there’s more demand than it can meet.
The park-it market has no age limit, which helps students such as Sonia Smart. She attends Santa Clara University as an international student from Iran and often frequents the market’s varied locations, including Los Gatos.
“It’s really helpful to allocate my budget to just my education and be focused on my education, instead of working extra to cover my expenses,” Smart told San José Spotlight.
West Valley Community Services is also working with the Los Gatos Library to get a space where they can guarantee residents privacy to talk about their other services, including supportive case management.
The nonprofit isn’t stopping at the Los Gatos expansion. It plans to have more vans up and running this fall to serve Title 1 schools, where students are often low-income. The vans will bring food to De Vargas and Nimitz elementary schools and Latimer School in San Jose and Sunnyvale so residents don’t have to travel to its permanent market in Cupertino.
Akimoto said the nonprofit wants to help as many people as possible with the Los Gatos expansion.
“You can feel that community (here),” he said. “We welcome people like George… and we hope that they come back and then continue to come back and then they tell a friend and then it grows from there.”
Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X.
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