Food banks are getting increasingly creative about where they put new distribution outlets. In a bid to expand their reach, especially into underserved areas, food banks are making use of farms, libraries, county clerk offices, shopping malls, and even horse racetracks as food distribution points. This attempt to meet people…
Posts published in “Strategy”
Feeding Tampa Bay’s new $60 million facility has all the things a food bank needs to be able to meet increasing demand for food – like excess capacity in its dry warehouse, extra dock doors, and additional flooring around its cooler and freezer for possible expansion. Despite all its preparations…
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…
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…
Manna Food Center’s paper-based system for helping people purchase food at local markets is not very sophisticated, but gets points for innovation. Since the pandemic, Silver Spring, Md.-based Manna has been distributing paper vouchers to hundreds of people monthly, who can use them to purchase culturally relevant food at small…
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.…