Food retailers often have close relationships with the hunger-relief organizations in their local communities, and they rely on their customers to help support those and other charities. Given grocers’ access to both shoppers and food products, supporting hunger relief is a natural fit that provides year-round assistance to those in need, especially during the holiday season.
SFA News Daily recently spoke with three retailers about their charitable initiatives. Following is what they said.
John Naylor, co-owner, Rosemont Market & Bakery, Portland, Maine
Rosemont Market & Bakery was born with the mission of making local food accessible to our community. While our retail markets serve as the connection point between our customers and our local farmers and suppliers, we recognize that some members of our community may benefit from extra support in accessing wholesome meals. Therefore, we have focused our charitable giving efforts on supporting nonprofit organizations with a mission of providing nourishing food to local children and families experiencing food scarcity.
We do this through redistributing products from our kitchen to organizations who are set up to place food directly into the hands of our community’s youth and families. Not only does this program support our neighbors in need, but it also helps to eliminate food waste by creating an outlet for culled products from our retail market shelves.
Additionally, we offer opportunities to our customers to support our charitable giving efforts through what we call “Community Funded Initiatives.” Using product-focused marketing, we highlight select local and seasonal items and donate a portion of the proceeds from each purchase to organizations that support food justice, ending child hunger, and equality for the LGBTQ+ people and their families in our community.
Nancy Cohen, president and CEO, Eddie’s of Roland Park, Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is such a special city—with a wonderful range of arts, education, animal welfare, social services, and other nonprofit organizations that Eddie’s of Roland Park is privileged to support. Included within a couple mile radius of our two stores are literally dozens of schools and community centers as well, so as you can imagine, the number of opportunities to give back in our community is quite great.
We aim give back as often as we can, and we also aim to showcase our community partnerships in unique ways to involve our customers, vendors, and staff. For example, during June, we worked with a local ice cream company, The Charmery, to create a custom Pride Month flavor that resulted in $500 raised for Baltimore Safe Haven. Later this December, our chefs will be partnering with the Morgan State University-based public radio station WEAA on a delicious Kwanzaa menu that features ingredients sourced from local, Black-owned businesses while also generating support for the station.
Our largest charitable initiative this year, and throughout the pandemic, continues to be with the Maryland Food Bank, an organization that tirelessly delivers to the thousands of families facing food insecurity during this heightened period of need. Every family-size dinner sold through our catering department during this holiday season results in a $5 donation to MFB, and that amount has potential to generate more than 10 meals for neighbors in need through their wholesale purchasing and distribution efforts. We have also tied a user-generated content social media contest to this initiative, whereby every use of the hashtag #madespecialbyeddies produces another $1 contribution to MFB. To date, we have raised more than $3,000 through these efforts, with Christmas and New Year’s still to go. We hope that, by not only giving but also spreading the word about this charitable partnership through our various channels and the local news media, we can inspire others to support MFB’s mission to end hunger in Maryland.
Becca Whitman, executive director, Raley’s Food For Families, West Sacramento, California
Raley’s Food For Families is a 501(c)(3), with a mission of alleviating hunger in the communities we serve. We are partnered with 12 Feeding America food banks, and those 12 overlap our entire company footprint.
In food banking, you have big warehouses that supply partner agencies—or as I view them, stores—church food closets, university pantries, and those kind of things. Between those 12 food banks, they have more than 1,900 food distribution partner agencies, and amongst all those agencies, they are feeding about 1.5 million people per month.
I think one of the most impactful logistical things we do at Food For Families is that we donate 100 percent to the food banks. Raley’s corporate absorbs all of the overhead and admin fees to run the nonprofit, which has grown substantially in the last few years. Our POS donation option, which we rolled out in 2019, has grown more than 500 percent in donations, thanks to the incredible philanthropic shoppers we have. The way it works is that food bank partners get the cash, and they buy groceries at cost through our suppliers, and they also use it with small farmers and the California Association of Food Banks. In addition, we also donate product via our Holiday Hope Drive every November and December. All donations stay local to aid the communities in which they were made.
The order guide that we put together for the food banks to buy product at cost is really aligned with our purpose of changing the way the world eats, one plate at a time, and it follows our Raley’s shelf guide attributes. Having Feeding America as a partner has been key in this better-for-you wellness journey we are all trying to support, because they have their own nutrition standards at the food bank level. Because of the products we offer, we are able to support many of their initiatives around nutrition education and clean eating.
Separate from Food For Families, Raley’s has grocery recovery or food rescue programs, which are daily donations of unsaleables. The food rescue program does partner with our Food For Families food bank partners, and that program is about $10 million to $12 million every calendar year.
Related: Raley's Food Lab Opens; Fresh Thyme Donation Benefits School-Based Program.