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OPERATIONS UPDATES
SHOP
Reopening our shopping floor has led to many great things! Hearing from visitors how much our food bank helps their family and how much they missed selecting their groceries has given staff and volunteers a big morale boost. The hard work that goes into sourcing items, inventory, warehouse receiving, sorting donations, setting up the floor and clean up is made worth it when we witness the growing numbers of folks who find shopping at our food bank to be an experience they can trust to make their lives easier.
Summer brought beautiful, bountiful produce and as the season shifts, we make way for apples aplenty and hearty cold-weather staples. It’s a great day when we have toilet paper to offer from open to close, and we’re loving our new motto: “Please, take only what you need.” The thousands of people who visit our food bank are in unique and individual circumstances, and our ability to meet their needs is ever improving.
PICK UP
Our drive through distribution of pre-packed boxes on Tuesdays at Christ the King Church’s parking lot has remained steady even as shopping visits have increased at Ellis Street. We recently considered moving to a shopping model inside the church instead of maintaining the site as a drive through as the weather turns more volatile. After surveying current visitors, we determined there was good reason to keep pre-packed boxes available in a drive through fashion to continue to offer an outdoor, low-contact way of getting items from our food bank.
Volunteer crews continue to gather twice per week to pack the boxes of food that go to CTK and other pick up sites in the county operated by our partners, as well as those headed for home deliveries. We are packing around 800 boxes weekly, with room to grow!
HOME DELIVERY
The home delivery program has grown more than any other facet of our services in the last quarter. We learn something new every week that we deploy our volunteer drivers to the hundreds of homes signed up to receive food boxes either weekly or every other week. We have taken on the routing and coordinating of our own program as well as the longstanding CHORE program of the Volunteer Center of Whatcom County. This means more people experiencing food insecurity are accommodated by the program without needing to meet many specific qualifications.
We hope our 3 great ways to get great food are able to help more people find hunger relief than ever before!
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