The Vendor Business School: Strengthening informal urban food businesses and the supply of healthy food in Quezon City, Philippines

Roa, J., Bertuso, A., Ricarte, P., Prain,G. 2024. The Vendor Business School: Strengthening informal urban food businesses and the supply of healthy food in Quezon City, Philippines.Policy Brief. CGIAR Initiative on Resilient Cities

This policy brief highlights the opportunity to increase efficiency and safety of city food systems by developing the capacity of informal sector food vendors in the Philippines, a country with about 54 percent of the people living in urban and peri-urban areas (PSA 2022).

It is based on evidence generated from a study in Quezon City, the largest city of Metro Manila with a population of almost 3 million people. The city’s 13,000 or more small vegetable vendors make up one of the biggest components of food marketing (EH Velasco II, QC-FSTF, September 2024, pers. comm.), which is crucial in achieving food and nutrition security targets. The CGIAR Resilient Cities Initiative (RCI) designed and developed the Vendor Business School (VBS) as a means to build the capabilities and skills of vegetable vendors and similarly equip them with an entrepreneurial mindset that can improve their own livelihood as well as contribute to a safer and more effective food marketing system. Piloting VBS in Quezon City yielded positive results pointing to the need to expand the approach not only in Quezon City but also in other cities in the Philippines.