As the former executive chef of a country club in Oklahoma, Jeff Marlow every once in a while would have to order a semi-truckload of ice for every day of a major golf tournament. Because there was no facility in the state large enough to handle such orders, the ice…
Posts published in “Strategy”
Oregon Food Bank’s plans for a new community food center are putting it in the vanguard of hunger relief organizations that are reimagining how food banking can work. Its Ontario Community Food Center, expected to open in late 2026, will be strategically located between a federally qualified healthcare center and…
Food banks are starting to throw around their purchasing power. Because of pressure from food banks, some food manufacturers are starting to remove added salt, sugar and fats from their canned and other goods. A side benefit is that more nutritious food is also ending up on the shelves of…
Second Harvest Heartland of Minnesota has had enough. Last year, the nation’s seventh-largest food bank recorded 7.5 million visits to its food pantries, up from 5.5 million the year before, and double the number of 2021. “It’s unsustainable,” said Allison O’Toole, the food bank’s CEO. It’s why the food bank…
Food banks have long said that they’re only as good as their pantry networks, and lately, they’ve been backing up that sentiment with intention. Fueled partly by Covid-era support, food banks have been growing the capacity of their pantries through a wide range of grant-making activities. Now, many are at…
Without input from the community, the renovation of Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank’s main warehouse, unveiled last week, probably would have turned out a little differently. In improving the warehouse, the food bank employed the same strategy it had when it constructed a brand new warehouse in another location in 2021.…
It was a Friday afternoon in late summer when Bryan Wang, the CEO of bosWell Inc., knocked on the door of Better Lives Rhode Island, a Providence-based community organization that supports a food pantry, community meals, and homeless outreach. Wang was cold-calling, trying to find an organization with plenty of…
In contemplating what food banking might look like in five or so years, the CEOs of our Food Bank CEO Roundtable imagined the ways in which food banks might act more like high-tech, consumer-oriented companies – and the ways in which they might not. Food banks and pantries started out…
Offering wraparound social services alongside free food has long been viewed as a desirable practice among food banks and pantries. Now, Greater Cleveland Food Bank has raised the bar on how it can be done. Its Community Resource Center, opened earlier this month, provides permanent space to 15 other nonprofit…