6 years, 20 selections, $1,612 in donations
Since March 2019, Food For Free has been selected to benefit from the Star Market GIVE BACK WHERE IT COUNTS Reusable Bag Program 20 times at five different Star Market locations. In total, the organization has received $1,612 to continue eliminating food waste and providing nutritious food to community members in need.
Tell us about Food For Free.
At Food For Free, our mission is to improve access to healthy food. We do this through establishing innovative programming and partnerships to overcome barriers and strengthen the community food system. We envision a future where everyone in our community, regardless of age, income, or background, has consistent access to fresh, healthy food. We accomplish this through several programs that increase food security among different populations in the communities we serve.
We envision a future where everyone in our community, regardless of age, income, or background, has consistent access to fresh, healthy food.
What services do you provide to the community?
The program that Star Market is most closely involved in is our Food Rescue program. It is also our longest-running program and has been operating since the early eighties. Our Logistics Specialists go to various locations, such as grocery stores, wholesale warehouses, universities, and corporate cafeterias, and pick up both ready-to-eat foods and mixed grocery ingredients. These items are then delivered directly to our community partners. Items never leave the truck between pickup and delivery.
We also have school-focused programs like Carrot Cards and the School Market program. Through Carrot Cards we provide school families with pre-loaded debit cards that they can use for groceries on the weekends while kids are away from school. Through School Markets we provide large orders of food to local school sites that volunteers set up in a farmers’ market style. Families in need can browse the market for free when they come to pick up their kids. There’s no stigma attached to it. The food is just there for the taking at a convenient location and time.
There’s no stigma attached to it. The food is just there for the taking at a convenient location and time.
We have our Just Eats program, which provides our food access partners with an option between grocery boxes or bulk produce deliveries. Our volunteers put together grocery boxes that weigh 21 pounds each. The grocery boxes are filled primarily with produce and also include some pantry staples, such as beans, rice, pasta, and peanut butter. We make and distribute about 1,000 a week. Some of those boxes go to housing sites, where resident service coordinators distribute them to residents who are older or disabled. Residents can either pick up their boxes or have them delivered directly to their units. Other boxes go to food pantries.
For the bulk option of our Just Eats program, our food access partners can choose to set up their offerings as a market-style pantry or pre-package bundles of food that their guests can grab and go. This element of choice allows our partners to do whatever suits their communities best.
Next, we run a Transportation Partnership program with organizations in Cambridge that have their own Greater Boston Food Bank accounts but don’t have their own means of transportation. We have been working with most of these organizations for decades. Since they don’t own trucks of their own, we go to the food bank, pick up their orders, and deliver directly to them. By doing this, we fill a gap in the community food system and enable our partner organizations to efficiently get food out to the community.
We have quite a variety of programs and try to stay nimble and responsive to needs we identify in the community. Over time, we’ve found that certain programs work better than others and adjust accordingly. We are constantly engaging with our community partners to understand the need. We have an annual agency survey to get more formal feedback. Our Logistics Specialists are also in the community daily, hearing and observing what is working and what is not. It is important to us to ensure that we are responsive to community needs while maintaining our focus on providing fresh, nutritious foods through all of our programs.
It is important to us to ensure that we are responsive to community needs while maintaining our focus on providing fresh, nutritious foods through all of our programs.
How has Food For Free used the donations from the Star Market GIVE BACK WHERE IT COUNTS Reusable Bag Program to further its mission?
We are very grateful for the support and the program’s ability to get our name out there, giving us more exposure to Star Market customers. The money we receive has gone toward operating costs, primarily for the Food Rescue program.
We are very grateful for the support and the program’s ability to get our name out there, giving us more exposure to Star Market customers.
I would also like to mention that we pick up from a couple of Star Market locations in the area, specifically the Mount Auburn Street location in Cambridge and the store at the Prudential Center in Back Bay. Through those partnerships, we’ve distributed around 45,000 pounds of recovered food each year. This has been a tremendous benefit of our relationship with Star Market.
Tell us a story about the impact of a program, service, or initiative that the Star Market GIVE BACK WHERE IT COUNTS Reusable Bag Program has supported.
One of the relationships we’ve had for a long time in the city of Cambridge has been our partnership with the Cambridge Women’s Center. Their program extends to women, trans people, and gender non-conforming folks who are comfortable in a woman-centered space. The food we recover from Star Market or purchase using these donations regularly goes to this location.
The Cambridge Women’s Center has drop-in hours three days a week. We try to get over there early on Wednesdays and have ready-to-eat foods to set out and use to stock the fridge in their kitchen. Often, when our trucks show up, some recipients coming for the drop-in hours will help us by making a chain from the van to the kitchen door. They are always very appreciative of the food that we are able to provide through our Food Rescue program.
Have you noticed any changes in community awareness or support since becoming involved in the Star Market GIVE BACK WHERE IT COUNTS Reusable Bag Program?
A little over a year after we became partners with Star Market, the pandemic began. Our engagement with individual volunteers exploded over those couple of years, and we really credit Star Market for being a part of that increase by getting our name out there.
People were looking for ways to be involved in their communities and help people in need at that time. It became obvious that there were gaps in our economic system because of the way the system has been set up. Some people were able to work from home, while a lot of others were not. There were also a lot of populations that couldn’t even access unemployment and other forms of assistance. The work we were doing to maintain access to fresh, healthy foods was critical at this time. We really appreciate the impact of the individual donations that we received from Star Market over those years.
We found that we had so much more access to funding and food donations during the pandemic. Today, the need has not gone away, but some of our resources have pulled back. In general, there’s less food available from the Greater Boston Food Bank and our other donors.
As inflation has become an issue, people ordering food have felt pressure to be more efficient in what they’re getting. This means there is less surplus for us to recover and distribute to the community.
We are still looking to engage with the public. You can find links to donate and sign up for volunteer opportunities on our website. As the spring goes on, we will have volunteer opportunities for people who want to see what we do and get involved, whether building grocery boxes or helping recover food at large trade shows, such as the Seafood Expo and the New England Produce Show.
We look forward to maintaining the relationships we have built with our community members and donors.
Interview with Tim Cavaretta, Director of Operations