A Week in the Life for our Food Recovery Team
Written by: Megan Joe, Director of Operations, So What Else
We had a jam-packed week full of lots of food pick-ups and distributions. We started the week off with a wonderful pick-up from Norman’s Farm in Woodbine, MD. We pick up from Norman’s farm every Monday at noon and we are always excited to see the beautiful fresh produce they provide for our programs.
After we closed up for the day, our friends from Whole Foods reached out to share that they had about three pallets of mangoes. We knew we couldn’t say no to picking up fresh mangos for the families we serve! We were excited about this because that meant we had enough food to serve our new community site in Hyattsville. There is a great need there for food assistance and we were able to very quickly distribute three pallets of mangos and half a pallet of asparagus.
Our team is so grateful to Food Rescue US Anne Arundel County because they have connected us with several big food providers. On Tuesday, we were able to pick up lots of spring lettuce mixes to distribute to families.
On Wednesday, we received a whole pallet of ground meat for our distributions along with lots of grapes.
On Thursday, our wonderful volunteers made beautifully decorated bags to hand out to families during our food distributions. It’s the little things that help make our food pantry a safe and caring place.
Friday was a big day for our team because we received a donation of approximately 20,000 pounds worth of food from our food recovery partners! We started organizing at 6 a.m. by picking up three vanloads of food from our friends over at Imperfect Foods. This was well worth it because we were able to get items that our community really needs like berries, mangos, and leafy greens.
Later that day we pick up from Red Wiggler Community Farm and Costco. Jenny from Community Farm Share dropped off lots of fresh greens for us and Manna Food Center donated over 3,800 pounds worth of preprepared meals and produce.
Finally on Saturday, our partners at Food Rescue US called us saying that Whole Foods needed our help because their fridge was getting too full and food would go bad. We quickly rushed over to pick it up and completed a quick food distribution that night we got back to the center. Families were very happy to receive freshly cut organic fruit and preprepared meals from whole foods.
Thank you to our food partners and volunteers for helping us get food to children, families and communities in need of nutrition and meal support.
