Fresh Approach

Fresh Approach, doing business as Freshest Cargo, is a California-based tax-exempt nonprofit that receives federal grants to develop community food spaces and increase access to healthy foods in underserved areas, operating as a prime recipient under the Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service and related USDA programs.

Fresh Approach operates from Concord, California, and is classified as a nonprofit organization. The vendor's federal footprint consists entirely of grant work (10 prime grant awards and 1 sub-award out of 11 total awards) across six USDA offices, with no federal contract prime or subcontract activity. The vendor works to increase access to healthy foods and nutrition education in underserved communities through partnerships with local agriculture producers and farmers markets, with a documented history reaching back to at least 2012.

The Department of Agriculture dominates the customer base, accounting for all awards in the source data. The Agricultural Marketing Service comprises five awards, while the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and National Resources Conservation Service account for two and one award respectively. The $1.8 million in combined potential value is anchored by a single award: a Specialty Crops Program grant. Recent work includes a $124,686.25 cooperative agreement from the Agricultural Marketing Service awarded March 1, 2026, under the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (CFDA 10.175), running through February 29, 2028. This funding supports Three Sisters Kitchen, a multi-use community food space in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, with two commercial test kitchens for value-added food business training, incubation, product formula development, and small-batch production. Prior work includes a Project Grant from the Agricultural Marketing Service (awarded September 30, 2023, completion September 29, 2026) focused on increasing SNAP recipient access to farmers markets across the San Francisco Bay Area through culturally appropriate outreach, market-match coupons distributed across 18 farmers markets in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, and engagement of 15 community navigators as paid interns. Fresh Approach served as a sub-recipient on a March 18, 2025 award under The Reinvestment Fund's Healthy Food Financing Initiative Planning Grant Program.

Award activity has been irregular — three awards in 2020, two in 2021, then gaps in 2022 and 2024 before single awards in 2023, 2025, and 2026. One award reaches completion within the next twenty-four months. Combined dollars obligated ($3.3 million) exceed combined potential value ($1.8 million), indicating that some grants have been drawn beyond their original authorization or that obligations reflect actual spend on multi-year cooperative agreements.