About the Fresh Food Program
In the summer of 2021, Move For Hunger initiated its Fresh Food Program, which has now become an integral component of our operations. Utilizing our expanding network of over 1,200+ transportation partners and implementing innovative cold storage solutions, we successfully enhanced the flow of fresh food from farms and various sources to underserved communities.
This year, our Fresh Food Program has experienced remarkable growth, reaching an impressive milestone of 4,348,702 pounds, equaling 3,623,918 meals delivered across the nation, providing essential nourishment to those facing food insecurity from coast to coast.
In 2022, our network helped us deliver over 1.8 million pounds to the communities who needed it most. In the first half of 2023, we already surpassed last year’s total at more than 2.1 million pounds of fresh food.
Why is this Important?
Fresh, healthy food is vital for everyone - but unfortunately it’s not accessible to millions of Americans. Fruits and vegetables are packed with essential nutrients that support our overall health.
Despite the fact that nutritious foods are essential, 54 million Americans live in a food desert with little access to fresh produce. Since fresh, healthy food can be very hard to come by, these 54 million Americans often rely on cheaper food which is normally not as nutritious and can lead to a variety of health problems. Our Fresh Food Program and its partners are making strides in aiding this issue by bringing more healthy and perishable foods to communities in need.
Move For Hunger and its team helped transport a variety of produce to people’s tables like sweet potatoes, apples, turkey, and dozens of other essential foods.
The Introduction of the Bulk Non-Perishable Recovery Program
At the beginning of the year, Move For Hunger launched the Non-Perishable Bulk Recovery Program. This program is in part the nonperishable counterpart to the fresh program, aiming to bring in larger (or bulk) loads of donations.
The ultimate goal of the program is to focus on large recovery loads from manufacturers and distributors of food and beverage products, to help them donate short-dated items (items with a best-by or other code date within a few weeks), and recover donations from community events, like marathons or festivals.
We had amazing success with our program this year! Several bulk recovery transportations made amazing strides to help the fight against hunger:
Mesa Moving & Storage helped the Move For Hunger team to transport over 44,000 pounds of GoGo Squeez pouches– a great, healthy snack for kids! The deliveries were sent to four different locations in the Salt Lake City area.
In Tennessee, Society of Saint Andrew sprang into action to transport 32,000 pounds of coffee after a terrible tornado outbreak in December. The coffee was delivered to Manna Café Ministries to be distributed to those affected by the storms.
Move For Hunger works closely with food banks to ensure that everyone has food available to them in the United States. Midwest Food Bank, for example, is located in Pennsylvania which has over 1.2 million people that face hunger every day. In just one year they received 242,000 pounds of donations from our network.
Premium Q Moving & Storage delivered 18,000 pounds of donations (apple juice, oatmeal, pasta, fruit cups and more) to Project Just Because, providing 15,000 meals!
After the Seattle Marathon in November, Move For Hunger worked with Gentle Giant Moving Company to deliver all of the leftover snacks from the day’s event to Ranier Valley Food Bank. Over 2,000 pounds of nutritious snacks like bananas, fruit cups, and pretzels were donated!
In 2021, Move For Hunger and its partners needed a solution to be able to transport fish to food pantries in a way that was food-safe and efficient. Our team came up with the brilliant solution for cold storage transportation and created the Seafood Donation Program. This project provided over 116,000 fresh food donations in 2023! The project is ongoing in collaboration with the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island (CRCRI), Farm Fresh Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, Eating with the Ecosystem, and United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI).
Move For Hunger teamed up with One Generation Away, a fellow food rescue and distribution non-profit, to get surplus food from a Pepsi/Quaker Oats warehouse in Georgia to those facing hunger in Southeast states. Eleven transports were organized through Move For Hunger between April and May 2023, with 1-3 transports occurring per week. This resulted in the delivery of over 400,000 lbs of Pepsi beverages and Quaker Oats snacks and granola bars!
Our Food Rescue Program
Move For Hunger has a network of amazing movers and organizations that help us provide healthy, hearty food to communities in need. This past year has been so successful. Here is a look into some of the amazing work that Move For Hunger and our network has done:
This past fall, Move For Hunger joined The Farmlink Project, another non-profit organization that combats food waste by collecting excess produce from farms and other donors and delivers it to organizations that serve food insecure communities, to move a surplus amount of apples from Appalachian area farms. With the help from Society of St. Andrew, our team transported over 160,000 pounds of apples to food banks across the East Coast!
Move For Hunger relocated over 9,100 lbs of frozen turkey donations from the New Hampshire Food Bank to support SHARE Funds holiday distribution in Rochester, NH. SeaCure Moving also aided in relocating 1,200 lbs of turkey donations to Greater Tuckerton Food Pantry and 760 lbs to St. Theresa Roman Catholic Church. 2023 was the third year in a row Nelson Westerberg of NJ provided multiple trucks for the Community Food Bank of NJ’s Annual Turkey Drive collecting over 3,000 donations!
Our partners at Dumbo Moving & Storage along with Infusion Media Group Nonprofit ramped up fresh food recovery in the New York City area. In addition to weekly transports, Dumbo Moving recovered fresh produce from multiple Trader Joe’s locations , providing meals to local food insecure communities. In the fall alone, they recovered and relocated over 60,000 lbs of fresh produce, providing over 50,000 meals to families in Brooklyn, NY.
Every Sunday from May to November, Paxton Van Lines and Northern Virginia Food Rescue teamed up to rescue surplus veggies and fruits from the Dale City Farmers Market. Paxton Van Lines helped transport 230,000 pounds of fresh food to communities in need, providing over 190,000 meals! Paxton Van Lines has been part of the Move For Hunger network since 2011 and has transported more than 460,000 lbs, equalling over 385,000 meals, to local Virginia food banks.
Move For Hunger and our network is making such great strides with our Fresh Food and Bulk Recovery Program to help relieve hunger in the United States. Join our network to be a part of the work that we do here!
