East Bay Company Providing Food Boxes To Alameda County Food Bank

ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA — The Alameda County Community Food Bank, facing ongoing needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown, is partnering with the Danville-based school lunch company Choicelunch to purchase meal kits that have added to the food bank's inventory and helped relieve some logistical challenges.

The food bank has purchased 37,000 meal kits from Choicelunch as of the first week of August, according to Michael Altfest, director of community engagement and marketing at the food bank. The meal kits were purchased with contributions from the community — about 80 percent of the food bank's funding comes from individuals and corporate and foundation contributions, Altfest said.

The meal kits are boxes that contain a range of staples, such as pasta, juice, peanut butter or canned tuna, and canned vegetables, fruit and soup.

The food bank distributes the boxes through its partners that include community food pantries, and at contactless drive-through stations across Alameda County.

The partnership has helped both organizations navigate changes that transformed their operations in a matter of weeks. The food bank plans for emergencies, but the pandemic followed by immediate economic collapse was a double whammy, Altfest said.

Within 10 days of the March regional shelter-in-place order, calls to the food bank's emergency help line increased by 1,000 percent, he said. And, social distancing meant fewer volunteers could work to sort and assemble food boxes and bags for people in need.

Meanwhile, Choicelunch, which had stopped its prepared lunch delivery to schools on March 17, had a warehouse, trucks, and staff who wanted to work, Choicelunch Chief Operating Officer Keith Cosbey said.

The food bank reached out to Choicelunch on May 29 and the company tapped their existing distributors for some of the items in the meal kits, and found other resources as needed. By the first week of June, they made their first delivery of 500 meal kits to the food bank, Cosbey said.

Within about two weeks, they were producing 5,000 boxes a week, and were delivering twice a week to the food bank. Choicelunch's boxes also helped the food bank shift its distribution model, Altfest said. "No one had ever done contactless distribution before," he said.

"With these boxes, it's logistically very easy for people to drive up to a distribution center and pop the trunk, and for a volunteer to put the box in the car."

The need for food in the community continues to grow since the pandemic began. Final numbers for July are still pending, but Altfest says that to date, the food bank distributed 4.2 million pounds of food last month.

In July 2019, they distributed about 2.7 million pounds.

So far, Choicelunch is the only company that is assembling meal kits for the food bank, Altfest said. He does not expect the need in the community to go away any time soon.

"The way this came on, nobody was prepared for the sheer intensity," he said. "All food banks are in a position we have never been in before."

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