Filling the “Grocery Gap” Year-Round

Food shelf and community engagement staff hope that year-round community food drives, like this December 2023 collection from the team at Productivity, Inc., will boost inventory during the slower donation periods.

Our community’s need for food is steady: Each month, Interfaith’s food shelf distributes an average of 69,000 pounds of food and goods to around 500 households.

However, between May and August, the food shelf sees some of its lowest donation totals.

“We’re about 8,000 pounds below average each month during this window,” says Andy Swerine, Interfaith’s Food Shelf Manager. This is equal to approximately 100 fewer carts full of groceries every month, and right at the time when kids are home for the summer.

One solution Swerine has for closing this seasonal gap is for the community to participate in food drives, which often bring in 1,000 or more pounds in a single drop-off.

Like Swerine, Ashley Wyatt-Bernstein encourages groups – school clubs or classrooms, sports or corporate teams, neighborhoods or community groups – to host food drives year-round.

As Interfaith’s Community Engagement Manager, she knows the benefits of food drives go both ways.

“We’ve seen successful food drives coordinated by neighborhood cul-de-sacs and large corporations alike. It’s a pretty easy way to make an impact in our community – and to foster team-building – regardless of the ages, the type of your group, or the time of year,” she says.

MAKING FOOD DRIVES MONTHLY
Wyatt-Bernstein and Swerine are working to pilot a year-round food drive effort, with the hopes to see at least one food drive per month.

“We’re so fortunate to receive major food drive collections from Holy Name of Jesus in March [during Prevent Hunger] and Plymouth Covenant Church in September. If we can boost donations in between those peaks and level things out, it will make a big difference,” Swerine explains.

These higher-activity months can bring in as much as 35,000 pounds of donated food and goods. Even then, Swerine says he has never felt like there was more than his team could distribute.

“We will always need to use funds to purchase food, but we want to reserve them for items that aren’t ideal for donating, like frozen meat and fresh produce. That’s where larger-scale donations of the basics, the non-perishables, really come into play,” he adds.

HOW TO GET STARTED
Learn more about hosting a food drive for Interfaith at iocp.org/donations/food-drives or view our list of most-needed food and household items at
iocp.org/most-needed-donations. No time to coordinate a food drive? Your individual food donations are always needed and appreciated. Drop-off hours are Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.