Mission & Impact

The Food Drive connects food with people who need it.

Our mission in three words is WE DRIVE FOOD. The Food Drive connects available food from commercial and community sources with people experiencing need. Our work is unique because our two-person staff and 150 volunteers distribute food seven days a week year-round. Through our Food Rescue Program, we recover good food that would have been wasted and deliver it to people instead. Through our Food Access programs, we mobilize donations of food to help feed our neighbors.

 

The Food Drive believes that improving food security is possible through collaboration, and that sustainable change begins in our own neighborhoods.

Food rescue sustains lives.

The Food Drive was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic to immediately tackle significant needs in our community. Our recipients are organizations that meet the challenges of food insecurity in a variety of ways: food pantries large and small, community dinners, low-income housing, a warming center, and motels sheltering formerly homeless individuals. The organizations gain significant benefit because the rescued food is free, thereby reducing internal expenses. In addition, The Food Drive delivers healthy, high-quality items including produce, prepared foods, bread, dairy, and organic meats. The more food we deliver, the more recipients reap these benefits.

Food rescue sustains the environment.

Our local environment benefits as well, since the food that The Food Drive rescues is saved from being thrown into the trash. Decomposing food is the second leading cause of greenhouse gases from landfill. Our program prevents perfectly edible food from becoming food waste; in fact, our long-term goal is zero food waste in the communities that The Food Drive serves.

Food rescue inspires awareness.

“When we look at the deeper, root causes and define hunger as a symptom, we can see the problem clearly as social injustice. And that is where we can begin to find real solutions to the complex economic, social, and environmental issues at the source.”

- Why Hunger

By the Numbers-

  • 750,000 pounds of food distributed to date

  • 653,000 equivalent in meals provided

  • $1.3 million total value of food distributed

  • 125,000 people served annually

  • 150 volunteers (ages 4 to 84!)

  • 10 communities served