Who doesn’t love a good party? Especially when it is to celebrate Food For Free’s accomplishments!!

Last month, we finally gathered in person at our new Packing and Distribution Center on Inner Belt Road in Somerville with our Board of Directors and Food For Free staff members. 

Due to unprecedented growth, we opened the Inner Belt location during the pandemic, moving operations and programs to Somerville from Cambridge in July 2021. 

Many members of the Board arrived to see our new space for the very first time and we were excited to welcome them and celebrate the hard work Food For Free has been engaged in since the onset of the COVID pandemic. 

The team enjoyed great food like Impossible meatballs, turkey stroganoff, and fresh salad from Revival Cafe, tasty beverages from Lamplighter Brewery, and played lawn games on the production floor and participated in fun raffles!

CEO Sasha Purpura, COO Ben Engle, and Director of Marketing Tina Scott addressed the crowd and shared how impressed they were at Food For Free’s nimble and innovative response over the past two years. In addition, each shared some impressive stats that demonstrated how much Food For Free has grown to meet the increased need for food in our communities. We are happy to share some of those accomplishments with all of you!

Some of the highlights of the incredible growth we celebrated included:

• The Packing and Distribution Center allows us to receive, process, and deliver 115,000 pounds of food every week.
• In partnership with the Greater Boston Food Bank, we helped pilot the Produce Direct Delivery Program and now receive 48 pallets of fresh produce every week for free. Which equates to 71,500 pounds of nutritious food delivered directly to our loading dock.
• We are on track to distribute 8 million pounds of food this year – compared to 2 million pounds of food a year before the pandemic.
• Healthy Eats grew from 160 clients to 400 clients, with over 12,000 pounds of food delivered to these recipients every week.
• Weekend Eats grew from 980 students in 2019 to 1,850 students in Cambridge and Somerville this school year, and we introduced the Weekend Eats Carrot Card – a reloadable debit card that we distribute to school liaisons to give to families for groceries. 
• Heat-N-Eats, which was put on hold during the pandemic, restarted in February 2022. The program is running with 2 weekly volunteer assembly shifts, producing 325 meals/week out of a small production kitchen at Biogen Cambridge.
• Additionally, 250 Heat-n-Eat meals a week are assembled by volunteer student and faculty groups at Harvard and Tufts Universities. 
• Since February, we have made a total of 4,000 Heat-n-Eat meals, supporting 9 different partners across adult learning, community college, and grade PK-8 public schools! 
• Just Eats started during the pandemic as emergency hunger relief. Initially, FFF committed to 500 boxes/month, then increased the box count to 1,000 boxes a month …and then 3,360 boxes a month!  Eighteen months later, we have delivered over 5 million pounds of food through this program and are planning to continue to run it as a signature program indefinitely!

The evening ended with CEO Sasha Purpura addressing the crowd one last time.

“Together, we are feeding more people than ever before. I am grateful that I get to come to work and lead this organization with all of you as part of my team. Because of your contributions to this organization – whether you’re on our Program team, writing emails to our community with updates, a Board Member dedicating your time and expertise, or one of our Food Rescue Coordinators out on the road, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have access to fresh food today across Eastern Massachusetts – BECAUSE OF YOU! Food is community, and food is love. And the people in this room exemplify that every single day.” ❂

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Interested in working at Food For Free?  Check our open positions now.