Member Agencies are the Heart of Our Work

Our Mobile Pantry and Pop-Up Pantry programs have been getting lots of attention. They are great ways to fill gaps in our network, but they are not intended to replace community agencies with roots and relationships that build trust. These programs are ways to distribute foods that don’t always work for member agencies.

Between trade mitigation and the changing produce economy we currently have huge volumes of TEFAP trade mitigation food online and significantly less variety in our food inventory. We understand the concerns agencies have about this change and promise to do the very best we can within our resources to procure a variety of healthful foods for you to share with the communities we serve.

There is a common misconception out there that Connecticut Food Bank Mobile Pantries are competing with agencies to access produce. This is not the case! Mobile pantries were devised as a just-in-time distribution model. We load the mobile pantries with food that falls in four general categories:

• food local agencies can’t distribute (because they don’t have refrigerator or freezer capacity in that region)
• with food that doesn’t have a long enough shelf life to go online, get ordered, and flow out to agencies before expiring
• food that arrives in quantities too small to sort and put online
• food we have in such huge volumes that agencies can’t order and distribute enough before it goes bad (for example trade mitigation milk or apples).

Nearly 80% of the 8 million pounds of fresh produce we received last year was distributed to our member network for you to share with your communities.

We want to remind our agencies that this is not a competition; we are all trying to do the best we can to serve people in need and we are in this together!