Streamlining Food Rescue

With over 20% of our food coming from retail donations, we are always looking for more ways to rescue food and get it to our neighbors as quickly as possible. Last year, we launched MealConnect in partnership with Feeding America.

MealConnect is a program that connects food banks and our partners directly with local food donors, including farms, grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants, making it easier for our partners to access fresh, surplus food and share with their neighbors quickly.

We launched the program with support from The Chef’s Garden, a local farm in Huron, which provides regular produce donations for our partner, Care and Share, to pick up each week. Over the past year, this relationship has added 2,208 pounds of produce that we would have missed out on if not for this program.

“MealConnect has been great,” said Anita Kromer at Care and Share. “The vegetables are beautiful, and the variety is amazing. The biggest thing for me is that it promotes healthy eating and makes fresh food more accessible for our neighbors. We’re happy the food doesn’t go to waste and it’s coming right from the source so it can’t get any fresher than that! It’s truly been a win-win.”

We’re thrilled to announce that this program is expanding with national donors: Sheetz, Aldi, Walmart and Kroger in certain locations are donating their surplus food to nine of our partners. We are excited to see how MealConnect will continue to grow and increase our food supply throughout our four counties.