Bulk Food and a Strong Partnership between Hunger Relief Organizations Means Opportunity for Countless Pantries Across Greater Boston
In the last two years, we saw greater, unprecedented growth in need than ever before in Food For Free’s 40-year history. According to Project Bread, hunger in the state of Massachusetts has doubled during the pandemic. And through state-wide survey findings published in June 2022 by The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), new data shows that at least 32% of the state’s population is food-insecure. That equates to 1 in 3 adults struggling to get enough to eat as the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with significant inflation continues to put economic pressure on household budgets, disproportionately affecting Black and Latinx communities and families with children.
Hunger is here, and Food For Free has grown to meet the need. We quadrupled our distribution and adapted to support this new reality by moving into a 12,000-square-foot warehouse space in July 2021.
There continues to be a high demand for access to fresh fruit and vegetables in our community. With the increased space, which includes our own loading dock, storage space, and walk-in refrigerator and freezer units, we knew we could do even more to support the hunger relief network across Eastern Massachusetts.
One of the projects this new space has enabled us to pilot is The Greater Boston Food Bank’s (GBFB) the produce direct delivery program!
The produce direct delivery program supports Food For Free with forty-eight pallets of free, fresh produce every week.
Bulk pallets are being prepared as part of “Just Eats” to be delivered to ProjectSOUP in Somerville. This kind of delivery wouldn’t be possible without GBFB.
Options include bulk pallets of cabbage, kale, collard greens, sweet potatoes, apples, and other nutritious fruits and vegetables.
Food For Free’s COO Ben Engle shares, “The food bank brings this delivery of 70,000+ lbs of food directly to Food For Free’s Packing and Distribution Center. This kind of support saves our organization the significant staff time and fuel costs associated with picking up all of this nutritious food. We are very grateful for this opportunity to partner with The Greater Boston Food Bank.”
With this increased amount of acquired fresh food, we are able to generate more Just Eats boxes and Healthy Eats deliveries at a lower cost to our organization. Additionally, we have been able to take these fruits and vegetables and create bulk pallets of mixed produce that we then deliver to several community partners including:
- Revival, Chelsea
- Bunker Hill Community College, Charlestown
- UMass Boston, Dorchester
- Project Soup, Somerville
- Cambridge Rindge and Latin School
- Cambridge Community Center
- Salvation Army, Chelsea
- Fountain of Grace Church, Canton
This program, with the generous support from our partners at GBFB, allows Food For Free to provide food to over 4,000 additional households every week.
“In a time where demand for food assistance remains at historic highs, we need to continue to find better ways to feed more people with the healthy food they need to thrive,” said Jonathan Tetrault, Vice President Community Impact at GBFB. “Our produce direct delivery program is just one example of working smarter by purchasing fresh produce from our vendors and having it delivered directly to our partners. This program reduces labor costs at GBFB, reduces transportation costs for Food for Free and shortens the supply chain resulting in fresher produce for those we are serving.”
Food For Free is excited to continue working with GBFB and adding more community partners to our list of mixed pallet recipients. And we look forward to seeing how our new space will continue to provide innovative opportunities to help us increase accessibility to healthy food for all! ❂
