Stop & Shop Donates Meals to Staff at the Meadowlands Mega Site

Committed to caring for its communities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Stop & Shop has teamed up with Hackensack Meridian Health, which operates the Meadowlands mass vaccination site in East Rutherford, to provide meals every Friday to fuel the vaccination staff and other frontline personnel.

Stop & Shop has been providing lunch for the vaccination staff since Friday, February 5th, and will continue doing so through April. For each of the 12 weeks, vaccination site workers receive an array of fresh sandwiches, salads, snacks and beverages. The donated meals are coming at a crucial time, as the site is providing upwards of 400 vaccines per hour to New Jersey residents, having administered its 100,000th dose on March 20. According to the New Jersey Department of Health, the state New Jersey has distributed more than 3 million doses.

“When the pandemic first hit, Stop & Shop stepped up to donate 5,000 meals a day to medical first responders at hospitals working around the clock to care for COVID patients,” said Stop & Shop president Gordon Reid. “Now, we’re stepping up to support vaccination site staff as they provide indispensable help in the effort to get as many people in our communities vaccinated as swiftly as possible. We hope this gesture of appreciation keeps them energized and encouraged.”

"We are so grateful to Stop & Shop for nourishing our Hackensack Meridian Health team as they work to vaccinate our community," says Regina Foley, Ph.D., MBA, RN, senior vice president, Integration/Transformation, Hackensack Meridian Health. "Operating the mega site at the Meadowlands is a herculean effort and the generous support of partners like Stop & Shop is vital to our success as a team."

Stop & Shop is also providing meals at other vaccination sites across its five-state footprint including Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, as well as Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut. This is in addition to supporting hospital workers at Long Island Community Hospital and Mt. Sinai South Nassau, providing lunch to nurses, doctors and other frontline staff at the hospitals as they care for COVID-19 patients.

Stop & Shop first began feeding frontline medical workers back in April of 2020, providing 5,000 meals a day to five hospitals in areas across the Northeast hardest hit by COVID-19. The supermarket also provided ‘essentials for essentials’ to mark Nurses Week in May of 2020. Knowing nurses and other essential workers were too busy to go grocery shopping, the supermarket brought groceries right to the hospital.

For information or to schedule a COVID-19 vaccine at the Bergen County COVID-19 Vaccination Mega Site at the Meadowlands, please visit www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/covid19. For more information about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine at Stop & Shop, or to schedule an appointment at participating stores, visit www.stopandshop.com/covid-vaccine.