$10 Million and Counting — How A Holistic Approach to Food Relief Drives Real, Lasting Impact

Farmers lost crops. Restaurants went under. Neighbors went hungry. The novel coronavirus pandemic revealed just how fragile our local food and agriculture systems are, and provided a wake-up call for local governments grappling with growing hunger and food insecurity.

The economic devastation brought by the coronavirus led to enormous food insecurity across America — especially in cities like San Francisco and San Jose, where the demand for food pantries doubled. At the same time, local economies struggled, with shuttered businesses due to shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders unable to stay afloat. Within the Bay Area, the crisis particularly called attention to a lack of organizations — both governmental and nonprofit–that are prepared to respond quickly with turnkey solutions for emergency relief food programs.

Through a series of hyper-local and highly successful initiatives driven by our network of small food businesses and insights into diverse communities, we learned that we have something to share about connecting the missing pieces in a way that not only benefits the entire ecosystem but also humanizes food relief in a way that doesn’t seem to be widely considered in today’s feeding program landscape.

The answer to effective local food relief is simple: Connect struggling food businesses to struggling individuals.

By distributing aid funding across various channels, struggling business owners and workers whose businesses might have been disrupted due to an ongoing emergency receive dependable incomes, while neighbors in need receive food, and local communities grow stronger. While the logistics can be complicated, the concept is actually simple.

A well-organized food relief system needs to simultaneously support impacted or at-risk populations with healthy, diverse food options while leveraging local resources and benefiting the local small business economy — without compromise. By shifting the focus to supporting the local community with local resources, the result is a triple-bottom-line approach that takes care of a community’s diverse populations and small businesses that make cities thrive. What this means, is that instead of government funds going directly to support a single individual, budgets can be distributed in a way that positively impacts two or three individuals or entities.

There’s no reason that farmers should be losing their crops because their suppliers have closed shop due to natural disasters while people are lining the corner to compete for limited supplies at food pantries. And there’s no reason a part-time worker who lost his or her job due to government shutdowns should be going hungry while a small food vendor struggles to find mouths to feed. The demand for food is there, the supply chains and food systems simply need to be revised and redirected.

Government resources have been insufficient in helping small businesses stay afloat, while food insecurity skyrockets to an all-time high.

For us, it opened the door for a number of established grassroots organizations to create a holistic solution by partnering with existing networks of care in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.

By acting fast and connecting the missing pieces, we were able to drive $10 million — and counting — in new revenue to struggling food businesses in need in the second half of 2020 alone. Those numbers translated to more than 850,000 meals for adults and children last year.

Another program connected farmers who typically supplied restaurants with food insecure individuals who could cook. At the peak of the pandemic, those efforts resulted in 44,150 grocery boxes delivered to over 5,300 total eligible participants.

Our recent experience with creating and executing food relief programs in the San Francisco Bay Area — including funding discovery, program design, program marketing, and awareness, participant intake, communication, local food partner curation, contract management, food delivery logistics, financial tracking, and more — uniquely positioned us to offer a turnkey solution for emergency food relief in an expanded number of communities.

Deploying these programs quickly, learning on the ground, and adapting even faster allowed us to build a simple blueprint that we were able to deploy within a day when hundreds of families were displaced due to heavy rains and mudslides.

Through these programs, what emerged was another profound insight: by delivering hot meals to those struggling with traumatic events, we were able to bring comfort and support those in need in a way that humanizes a historically transactional food system.

Connecting neighbors in need with nutritious and delicious food has the added benefit of shedding the stigma typically associated with food assistance.

Leveraging local food businesses to deliver meals adds an intentional layer of considering impacted individuals in a unique way — as humans, facing hardship in need of not only nourishment but comfort and support.

A hot meal from a known, local restaurant can have a much greater impact on a person in trauma than a nondescript dish from a large catering company. And getting fresh, high-quality produce delivered from the farm is certainly more humanizing than standing in line at a food pantry. This high-touch approach provides needed nourishment but is also so much more impactful in uplifting communities in a time of crisis.

Our programs go the extra mile in customizing meals to neighbor’s needs. When choosing meal partners, our feeding programs take into consideration dietary constraints and cultural preferences. That includes people who are sheltering in place at a single occupancy room due to COVID-19, those who have lost their jobs and need temporary assistance, or those who have lost homes or businesses.

No matter the circumstance, all should have access to meals they would typically consume in a way that preserves their dignity. That means ensuring meals are culturally relevant, meet dietary and allergen requirements, and — most importantly — are sourced from a familiar local restaurant.

While we’re still listening, learning, and adapting to project-specific problems needing resources and quick solutions, we think we’re onto something.

Food systems are essential to economic activity because they provide the energy that communities need to live and work. While the pandemic exposed a lot of our established system’s weaknesses, they’ve also given us enormous opportunities to try new approaches that will create sustainable change and lasting impact.

To get learn more or get involved with Off the Grid’s relief efforts, please contact us here.