I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).

The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.

It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.

Edit: I posted this in a comment.

Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.

Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.

We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.

  • nocturne@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I said they did not want it in large quantities. Most of the people who come through the bank are conscious of other’s and know they do not have the time or means to deal with all of the extra fresh produce while working multiple jobs, or some live in a motel room with only a microwave. So they do not take something that maybe someone else could use. We did have some people taking cases. But not everyone can deal with that.

    Everyone was given, I think, 4 heads of cauliflower and a dozen tomatoes in their cart. Very few did not take them. They were also offered a case of veggies. Which most declined. Hell I did not even take a full case myself because I know I did not have time to process it.