Montgomery County families may soon have better access to healthy produce with the help of Montgomery County Food Bank's new mobile unit that makes it easier for the food bank to store and transport fresh fruits and vegetables its 50 local partner agencies—which includes Montgomery County food pantries, churches and schools.

Lauren DeGeorgio, director of marketing and communications at the MCFB, said the food bank received a $73,000 grant in July from Kroger Houston to create the Produce Pod, a refrigerated mobile unit built by manufacturing company Huntsman Corp.

"The issue with our partner agencies or food pantries is they don’t have the capacity to hold the fresh produce because many of them don't have refrigeration units, so we can only distribute so much [produce] because they have no way to keep it cold," DeGeorgio said.

DeGeorgio said the Produce Pod can store 210 boxes of produce, thus allowing the food bank and partners to distribute fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables to 735 additional individuals per day and more than 700,000 additional pounds of fresh produce annually.

While the mobile unit will officially launch this summer, DeGeorgio said the MCFB will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Produce Pod 11 a.m. Feb. 12 at the Montgomery County Food Bank, located at 1 Food for Life Way, Conroe.