If you were able to peek into our trucks this week you would have found them full of carefully packed boxes each containing pineapple, butternut squash, onions, apples, carrots, rice, and potatoes. Our drivers criss-crossed the city delivering 3,000 of these boxes to our community partners in Jamaica Plain, East Boston, Waltham, Cambridge, Chelsea, and more. What are these new boxes all about? These boxes are our new Just Eats Grocery Box program and they are an embodiment of our belief that access to healthy food is a fundamental right. With the pandemic still raging on and food insecurity rates in Eastern Massachusetts climbing, many of our partners are urgently in need of food to provide to the individuals and families they serve. Our Just Eats program is helping deliver what they need.
In December, we began a pilot for our “Just Eats Grocery Box” program which provides food boxes to food pantries and community organizations in the Boston area for grab-and-go food distribution. The Just Eats program replaces food boxes previously sourced from the USDA’s Farmers to Families food box program which now has very limited availability in Massachusetts.
During the first week of our pilot in early December, we delivered over 500 boxes which we contracted the Boston Area Gleaners to source and pack. The Gleaners had experience sourcing and packing boxes for the Farmers to Families program over the summer and they readily agreed to help us kickstart our pilot program. With the Gleaners handling the sourcing and packing for us, our team began to work out details on how to scale up packing in our own packing center in East Cambridge.
Our Operations Director, Ben, and our Programs Director, Steph, began to strategize with their teams an efficient assembly line system that would maximize the number of boxes that we could pack at our new volunteer food packing center in East Cambridge. Our Volunteer Manager, Toyosi, began recruitment for a new volunteer team to help pack food boxes. She also stepped up to manage the program logistics in our packing center. Our Executive Director, Sasha, began reaching out to our corporate supporters to obtain sponsors for the new program.
Fast forward to February as we are now packing 3,000 boxes per week with our staff and volunteers packing 1,000 boxes and the Gleaners now contributing 2,000. We’re grateful for all the helping hands that stepped up to make this happen. We could not have done without the contributions of our staff, volunteers, donors, and supporters!
Each Just Eats box includes approximately twenty five pounds of produce and pantry staples such as rice, beans or lentils, potatoes, onions, carrots, apples, oranges, kale, and other produce options. The boxes are grab-and-go, the preferred method of distribution during the pandemic to keep workers, volunteers, and pantry participants as safe as possible. The Just Eats program provides food boxes to Boston area food pantries and community organizations in Cambridge, Chelsea, East Boston, Revere, Somerville, Waltham, and other local communities. You can read more about the Just Eats program here.
