During our leadership restructuring, I spent some time talking to a potential volunteer about how we source food. It was another one of those times where I realized that things I take for granted are a mystery to those outside of the system.
So, how does our pantry get food?
(I can only speak for how we do things. Other pantries are undoubtedly different, which may be determined by location, affiliation, and size among other factors.)
There are 5 primary ways we get food.
1. Regular direct donations
We are a church based pantry, so church members and community members who use our building drop donations off each week.
This is the area where we would most like to grow, but currently lack someone to organize the effort.
In a typical week, this is probably no more than 5% off the food we distribute.
2. Food Drives
This is when businesses, scout troops, community organizations, and church groups collect a large amount of food in a short period of time. We have even had children do food drives at birthday parties.
The majority of this happens for us during the months of November and December.
This past year, we were incredibly blessed by several large food drives. We had to expand into another storage room to accommodate the overflow, which was great. We have given that food away conservatively, knowing that we will not see such abundance again until next November. It is the first week of March, and we have now come to the end of our holiday donations.
I would loosely place one time corporate donations in this category as well. We had a volunteer organize a 4,000 pound donation from Campbell's soup for us last fall. It required a bit of leg work on our part in terms of getting a driver, a truck, and volunteers to unload a truck after midnight, but it was a great blessing. Half the donation was soup, and the other half was juice, juice drinks, and spaghetti sauce. We have been distributing food from this donation since November, and likely will make it through March before running out. This was really a once in a lifetime opportunity.
3. Foodbank
We are partners with the Central Virginia Foodbank, which is part of Feeding America.
Most of the year, we get around 50% - 75% of the food we distribute this way.
We pay a "shared maintenance fee" based on the amount of food we withdraw, as well as an annual membership fee. The foodbank uses these funds to pay for staff, utilities, facility costs, trucking, insurance, administrative fees (like postage and printing), etc.
Usually, food is 19cents per pound to us. Some foods are less expensive, and on occasion, there will be some free items. Sometimes, food the foodbank has to purchase to fill in nutritional gaps is more expensive to us (think wholesale pricing).
There are some great things about using a foodbank, not the least of which is that we can get a lot of food inexpensively.
There are some drawbacks. Selection and quality are variable and unreliable. Long trainings are required, and only a limited number of shoppers are allowed per agency, so a small number of us shoulder the burden of shopping. Shopping trips require a regular appointment (which is hard when our shoppers all have different schedules). Shopping, loading the van, unloading the van, hauling the food into the pantry, cleaning it, and putting it all away is a long day's work. We invest a lot of time into obtaining food from the foodbank, which is time we can't invest in other areas of ministry.
4. Food Rescue
We literally save food from the garbage. We have just really gotten into this over the past year, but I know some agencies do this to a much larger extent.
I have a neighbor who volunteers at a local school lunchroom, and rescues unopened milks, yogurts, juices, etc. and brings them to me a few days per week.
We have a volunteer who is connected with another community volunteer in bread rescue. The community volunteer goes to a local commercial bakery 5 mornings per week to rescue bread overruns and distributes those to various agencies around town. Our volunteer get over 100 loaves of bread from him once per week.
We are also members of Food Donation Connection, which is a national organization focusing on food rescue. They work with a number of large chains. We specifically are partnered with a WaWa and a Chipotle. WaWa donates their leftover hot foods (breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs, pretzels, hashbrowns, etc.) Instead of throwing them away at the end of the time they are allowed to keep them hot, they deep freeze them. We pick up 4 days per week and distribute the items frozen. This usually fills one large upright freezer each week. Most weeks we receive about 400 food items. We pick up from Chipotle 2 days per week, and receive their leftover meats from the past 2 days, which have been bagged and labelled for us. We get anywhere from 10-20 pounds of meat a week this way.
Food rescue is awesome. Food Donation Connection provides online and printed training, which makes life easy. We pick up in insulated bags, which they provide, and are required to sign for the donations online which is a simple process. It costs us nothing, saves waste, and provides a lot of food.
The biggest drawback is that it does require a lot of volunteer hours. I have a number of people going to 2 different locations on different days and times, and coordinating the effort does take a bit of work.
5. Purchasing retail
There are really two ways this works for us.
We have one volunteer who will scout for great sales and acquire cases of pantry staples this way.
We also will use the grocery store as an emergency back up to fill major holes in our inventory.
What does this mean for donors? Donate thoughtfully. Take the time to see how your local pantry sources food and how your donation can make the most impact. (See more tips for donors here.)
Does your pantry have innovative ways you keep food on the shelves? Leave a comment!
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