The Melrose Messenger

The Food Drive Celebrates Four Years of Local Food Rescue With Harvest Fundraiser

On Saturday, November 9th, The Food Drive will be hosting its third annual Harvest fundraiser to support the organization’s mission of local food rescue. The fundraiser will feature tastings from local restaurants and chefs, live jazz from local musicians, autumn cocktails, a silent auction, and a raffle. Supporters are encouraged to buy their tickets ahead of time, although tickets will be sold at the door this year as well.

The Food Drive is one of Melrose’s newer nonprofits, and it has quickly gained enormous local support for its food rescue work. The idea behind food rescue is that businesses can donate leftover or excess food that would otherwise be thrown out to food pantries and other hunger-relief organizations. Food rescue serves two functions: it prevents food waste and helps alleviate hunger and food insecurity.

At the beginning of 2020, founder Jana Gimenez had just transitioned out of her role as an event planner, and was looking to find a new position that would center community service more. “I really cared about our clients like Rosie’s Place,” Gimenez explained, “and I was hoping to direct my service to help others, especially people who are experiencing poverty.” At the same time, her husband, Tony, who had been a professional trumpet player, was reexamining what he wanted to do next with his own career.

When the pandemic hit, it became clear to Gimenez that things were going to look different for many people for quite some time. “We were seeing an increase in need,” she said, “and there were news reports about piles of potatoes going to waste, things rotting and being thrown away. Tony and I both wanted to do something.”

It was actually a job that Gimenez didn’t get that spurred her to start The Food Drive. “I had an interview at Food for Free in Boston,” she explained, “and I didn’t get the job, but I got hooked on the idea of food rescue…before that, I didn’t even know that food rescue was a thing. Then Tony asked, ‘why don’t you start one here?’”

Soon, both Jana and Tony were involved in their new nonprofit. They started in November 2020 making deliveries from a single grocery store to Bread of Life, where Jana was on the board, and quickly other restaurants and stores joined in. Buckalew’s was the first Main Street business to participate (and owner Robin Peevey will be honored with a Harvest Hero award at the Harvest Fundraiser in recognition of her ongoing support of The Food Drive). Then The Bread Shop, Shaw’s, Starbucks, and the Farmer’s Market all began to volunteer their leftover food for delivery to those in need. Deliveries began to go to a range of recipients, including the two food pantries in Melrose - Pantry of Hope at Melrose First Baptist Church and A Servant’s Heart Food Pantry at Faith Evangelical Church.

“It was an experiment,” Gimenez said, “to see what would happen. What else were we doing at that point? We kept getting more requests, from both donors and recipients, and it became clear there was a need for a full-time nonprofit.” Jana and Tony started out doing all the deliveries themselves, until, Gimenez recalled, “one Saturday, our daughter (who was then thirteen) called and said, ‘Um, are you coming home?’ We hadn’t realized how much picking up and dropping off there would be, and how long it would take.”

So they began recruiting volunteers. Gimenez set up a SignUpGenius, and “when all these people responded, I cried,” she said. She started advertising on the Melrose Community Facebook page, and people reached out, asking, “How are you funding this? How can I help?” The Food Drive became a nonprofit, recruited a board, and, Gimenez said, “it just blossomed.”

“The Food Drive has been a family thing since the beginning,” Gimenez added, noting that their daughter created The Food Drive’s logo as a thirteen-year-old and now, as a junior, is an intern at the organization.

Soon, The Food Drive launched new initiatives, as the needs in the community and the available resources became clearer. The idea for the Community Freezer program arose one day when Gimenez had just picked up a donation of hot meals from Turner’s Seafood, and happened to get a message from a family whose SNAP benefits had run out. She delivered the meals directly to the family, but quickly realized that making home deliveries would not be a sustainable way to get ready-to-go meals to those who needed them.

Then Tony came up with the idea for a Community Freezer, and the First United Methodist Church agreed to host it. “We started slow, with seeing who wanted to donate, and where it needed to go,” said Gimenez, “and it grew to giving out meals every Sunday to whoever needs them. There are a lot of community fridge programs, and we researched it,” she went on, “but this model seems to fit better, because of the magic of the freezer.” Home cooks or groups make the meals following specific guidelines, making sure to include a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. Then they can take those meals straight to the freezer while the church is open. “And it makes it so easy for the people who need help,” Gimenez noted. Currently, the Community Freezer gives out 60 to 100 meals per week. The Food Drive recently received a grant to run a series of Community Meal Prep Clubs at The Kitchen, led by local chef Mama Jean - a great example of collaboration among several local organizations toward the goal of alleviating hunger.

Today, The Food Drive has 32 donors and 30 recipients in 10 communities. About 80% of their deliveries take place just in Melrose, Malden, and Everett. Food rescue from local businesses is still the largest program. The Food Drive also runs the Community Freezer and a weekly No-Cost Grocery Store at the Levi Gould and Fuller apartment complexes, and makes weekly deliveries of hot meals from La Qchara and Giacomo’s to a local motel shelter.

The Food Drive also has donation bins in seven locations around town. “Neighborhood food drives are especially active,” Gimenez said, “and this time of year, everyone wants to do a holiday food drive.” School clubs as well as local businesses like Gray’s Appliances and the Kim Perotti Team will often run food drives. “We research and tell them what is needed at the time they’re doing the food drive,” said Gimenez, noting that people often donate pasta, but don’t realize that food pantries also need shelf-stable milk, cooking oil, spices, and hot tea and coffee. “All these things we take for granted,” Gimenez pointed out.

For some clients, prepared food can be a lifeline. “A lot of people who suffer from food insecurity, people think they’re not working, but it’s usually the opposite,” Gimenez pointed out. “Often they’re working three jobs or working and managing children. They’re juggling so much.” Other clients prefer to get fresh produce from the local food pantries. They “want to cook their own produce so they know what they’re eating and can feed their families good stuff,” Gimenez said. Having both options available allows The Food Drive to meet a wider range of needs in the community.

Gimenez noted that some people may have the misconception that rescued food has gone bad. “Every retailer has a rotational system where the food that’s been there has to go out,” she explained. All of the Food Drive’s donors rotate out produce long before it actually goes bad. For example, Gimenez said, Calareso’s Farm Stand in Reading has such high standards for what they rotate out that, “as a rule, their produce is spectacular.” Calareso’s joined The Food Drive’s efforts three years ago with eight boxes of produce a week; now they provide thirty, supplying eleven different organizations in six towns.

While the food that The Food Drive distributes is donated, the organization needs monetary donations as well to fund the work of organizing deliveries and figuring out which donations go where. “We call it ‘the puzzle,’” Gimenez said, noting that The Food Drive juggles 150 volunteers making daily deliveries throughout its service area.

A lot of The Food Drive’s work is in determining where a donation will have the greatest impact. Gimenez gave the example of new partner Peppino’s Italian Market. The Food Drive brings their extra sandwiches and pizza slices around the corner to Insight Recovery Center, where a dozen men live while they are recovering from addiction. “A lot of them are working, but some are struggling,” said Gimenez. “That small bag makes an enormous difference there, where it would be a tiny drop in the bucket at Bread of Life.”

A third of The Food Drive’s annual revenue comes from the Harvest fundraiser, now in its third year. “Early on, being so small and so local, we knew we were going to have to do an event,” Gimenez reflected. “I had the background in event planning, and I knew what would work here: cocktail parties are way more fun than sit-down dinners.” The Food Drive doesn’t have a single large source of funding: instead, its funding mostly comes from smaller grants and sustaining donors. “Most of our funding is grassroots, which is great, because it means the community is supporting us and keeping us going.”

“Our goal is not to expand geographically,” Gimenez said, “but to maximize what we’re doing locally. If there’s a need, we do our best to fill it. It’s all grown very organically from what people have needed.”

You can support The Food Drive by purchasing tickets for the Harvest Fundraiser here.

Posted November 3rd, 2024