Late last fall Whole Foods Alewife approached us and asked if we’d like to be the recipient of their Whole Night Madness sale. Each year, Whole Foods Alewife stays open for 36 hours leading up to Christmas. From 10pm – 5am the night before Christmas eve, they have live music, karaoke, and incredible sales. They also elect to donate 5% of sales to a local non-profit. In 2012, Food For Free had the honor of being that non-profit.

Whole Foods is a community-minded organization, and we greatly appreciate all that they do for us – not only donating 5% of the Whole Night Madness proceeds, but also the hundreds of pounds of delicious, nutritious food they donate each day of the week. But this event, and the days leading up to it, truly showed how partnerships between organizations and community can really have an impact. For the month leading up to the sale, customers were able to purchase food donations for Food For Free at the register. The staff at Whole Foods was fully engaged and encouraging folks to participate. At the end of the month, I received a call from Whole Foods letting me know had $11,000 worth of non-perishables packed up and ready for us to collect. This equated to 4 pallets of food, each stacked about 7-feet high!

We rely on the support of the community to do the work we do. Donations of time and money allow us to purchase and operate our trucks. And without the food donations from Whole Foods and others like them, we would not be able to deliver the near one million pounds of food we deliver each year into the emergency food system. So a huge thanks to Whole Foods Alewife and all the customers that supported our cause throughout the month of December!