PHA Awards $100K to 7 Organizations Committed to Making Indianapolis a Good Food City

Davonya Brimmage (left) and Julius Winters (right), two Good Food at Home participants in Indianapolis purchasing fresh produce with the produce credits they received.

More than 50% of residents in Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, are food insecure. Every day thousands of families worry about where their next meal is coming from. For over 5 years, Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) has been partnering with the city of Indianapolis and community organizations to help families put good food on the table.

“It just shouldn’t be that hard to eat well,” said Joe Hogsett, Mayor of Indianapolis. “Thanks to initiatives like PHA’s Good Food at Home it is easier.”

Since 2022, PHA has provided 2.1 million servings of produce to families in Indianapolis. Now we’re taking our work one step further. Working hand in hand with city leaders, in 2025 Indianapolis became one of our first Good Food Cities.

Good Food Cities is an initiative to double produce consumption in 15 US cities by 2030 by increasing the supply, access, and marketing of fruits and vegetables. To bring this initiative to life, PHA is awarding $100,000 to seven community organizations in Indianapolis to develop place-based programs that make it easier for people to access fruits and vegetables.

One of the organizations that PHA is supporting is Nine13 Logistics. Nine13 Logistics was founded in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic by Tom Hanley. As schools and businesses closed, Tom, who was running a youth education nonprofit at the time, was eager to find a way to help.

“On March 23, 2020 I sent an email to six people in the city. It was a short one. I said ‘Hey, I have 4 vans, 10 staff, a forklift, and a 10,000 square foot warehouse. How can I help?” recalled Tom.

Within two hours Tom was on the phone with local city leadership and two of the largest food banks in Indianapolis being asked to support two new food programs. That’s when Nine13 Logistics was born.

“We picked up the first pallets of food 48 hours later, and all we did for the next year was manage food deliveries across the city,” said Tom. “At its peak we were feeding 2,500 unique households a week with our home delivery program and moving food to about 50 community partners a week.”

 

Nine13 Logistics van making food deliveries in Indianapolis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic carried on, new opportunities continued to present themselves and Tom and his team remained committed to helping. One of the most shocking things he learned while doing this work was that oftentimes the biggest headache was not sourcing food, it was moving food from point A to point B so that it could reach the community.

Without proper transportation and storage, food spoils and gets wasted. That’s where Nine13 comes in. They use their warehouse and fleets of vans and trucks to safely store and deliver food to 40+ community organizations.

One of the organizations Nine13 supports is Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center. They’ve been running a pop-up pantry in their lobby for decades. When the pandemic hit and demand for their services sky-rocketed, Nine13 stepped in to help them ramp up their operations.

“We were originally only able to pick up food in a little 15-passenger van. It was like playing Tetris,” said Joni Hurst, who manages the food pantry at Mary Rigg. “Thanks to Nine13, we were able to triple the amount of food we could pick up and distribute.”

Members of Nine13 unloading pallets of food at Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center.

Over the years, Nine13 has continued to help Mary Rigg expand their reach, so much so that they’re now on the cusp of opening a new and improved standalone pantry to better serve their neighbors and keep up with the rising demand.

“In 2025, we saw a 63% increase in unhoused neighbors visiting the pantry,” said Heather Pease, president of Mary Riggs. “With the new pantry, we’ll be able to increase our food distributions from one day a week to three days a week. That wouldn’t be possible without Nine13’s support.”

With the new grant from PHA, Nine13 is developing a centralized food hub in Indianapolis to offer even more logistics support to organizations like Mary Rigg, small retailers, and local growers. The food hub will include 2,500 square feet of freezer storage that partners can use to safely store food that they source before it gets distributed.

“Freezer storage continues to be a major pain point for many of the partners we work with. It’s a big cost that many can’t afford,” said Tom. “By offering shared, centralized storage, we can reduce the operational costs for each program and help our partners get more good food into the community.”

In addition to supporting Nine13, PHA is also awarding grants to the following organizations:

• Bountiful Growers United is a collective of growers in Indianapolis. They’re using their grant to host monthly cooking demonstrations and produce distributions in neighborhoods across the city with high rates of food insecurity and diet-related illnesses.
  
• Centers of Wellness for Urban Women is using their grant to expand their Food and Fit program, which provides produce boxes, fitness classes and assistance with insurance enrollment to residents in need.
• Kheprw Institute is using their grant to conduct a feasibility study for a new food hub at their 17-acre urban farm. The study will bring key stakeholders together to assess infrastructure needs and explore viable business models.
  
• Charity Cares is using their grant to host mobile health events, where residents can pick up food and access on-site health and social services, including housing and child care support.
• Flanner House is using their grant to train youth in urban farming via their F.E.E.D program and to expand their greenhouse to better meet demand for healthy, locally grown food.
• BU Wellness is using their grant to host pop-up markets, where residents can pick up food and get access to nutrition education, mental health resources and workforce development support.

By supporting these local programs and organizations that address food equity and the social determinants of health we will increase the supply, access and marketing of fruits and vegetables and be one step closer to making Indianapolis a Good Food City.