A Question from our Community - Managing Growth and Stability
If it's one thing we get a lot of at Food Stash - besides good rescued food - it's questions!
Today we'd like to tackle an excellent and thoughtful question from a member of our community, who asked us: "Food Stash provides 125 Rescued Food Box grocery home deliveries a week - which is great! But I'm wondering what stops FS from providing 200 or 5,000...? If almost 50% of our food is wasted in Canada, and there are more families who need healthy grocery home delivery, why not deliver even more boxes?"
This is an important question we think about a lot. Our Rescued Food Box (RFB) program is one of several programs we offer - others you may know of include the weekly Rescued Food Market, and the food deliveries we provide to 45 nonprofit partner organizations. We see firsthand the demand for programs like RFB, and thanks to community support, we've expanded each year from just 15 households in 2016 to over 120 households today.
Onboarding new RFB households is a serious commitment. By focusing on nutrient-dense options including whole fruits and vegetables, dairy, and frozen meat/alternatives, and carefully customizing boxes to meet each member's dietary needs and preferences, our goal is to provide reliable nourishment; not just calories.
When we welcome a new RFB member - someone with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses who needs and deserves a customized box of healthy groceries delivered to their home each week - we want to be certain we can deliver good, appropriate food to them consistently for as long as they need it.
So, what does it take to provide home grocery deliveries to 120+ households every week? While the food we rescue from grocery stores, wholesalers, and farms is "free"... it's not really free. The only reason we can rescue and provide this food is that members of our community donate generously, helping us to cover not only our delivery and supplies costs, but also the costs of warehouse rent and cold storage, maintaining our 3 food rescue vehicles, and paying our staff - including 8 food rescue drivers - a living wage.
In other words: We can't provide dependable, high-quality, and individually-customized food deliveries each week without your help.
You can support home deliveries and other programs with a monthly donation.
Monthly donors help ensure we can be here for our community members consistently, as long as they need us.
Pledging to donate monthly means becoming a Food Stash Sustainer, a small but mighty group of steady supporters that help make everything possible.
When you become a Food Stash Sustainer, you're taking action to fight food waste, improve our community's access to healthy food, and help the environment.
The action you take will have a lasting impact.
Your monthly gift is tax deductible - you can get a single tax receipt at the end of the year, or get monthly receipts sent to your inbox as you prefer. You can change or pause your donation any time.
We have some lovely brand-new Food Stash tote bags and while they last, we'd love to offer you one as a small thank-you if you sign up as a new monthly donor of $10/month or more.
Not ready to join? No problem! Making a one-time gift, or simply forwarding this email to someone you know, would also be so helpful, especially leading into the busy summer months when donations tend to slow down!
Thank you for reading, and for caring.