Urban Recipe runs food co-ops. We have spent years continuing to improve our co-op model to get food to people who need it. Five years ago, with the global pandemic, our model ran into a wall and we had to figure out a way to get families food, even without the co-op community.
With partners like Woodward Academy and Peachtree Church, we launched our Mobile Pantry Program as an option to keep food in co-op members’ homes during crisis. Though we have returned to our co-op model for over 60% of our food distribution, Urban Recipe retained Mobile Pantry as a way to continue to service families who may not need food as frequently as twice a month, or those who cannot commit to active participation in a food co-op.
Our Mobile Pantry model is simple:
- Urban Recipe sources food from our various food partners.
- Volunteers pack boxes of groceries.
- Our partners take those boxes and distribute them to families in need.
This refined model, however, has been a labor of love and collaboration with so many partners, including St. Luke’s Presbyterian and Dodd Sterling United Methodist. These two churches, recipients of last year’s Growth and Gratitude Award at Tummy and Soul, have been our longest standing mobile pantry partners, distributing boxes every other week for almost 5 years now. Not only do they distribute food, they also help pack it. Two of our most dedicated volunteers, Nancy and Daryl Moore, share a little more about the launch of the Mobile Pantry partnership.
“Soon after the COVID shutdown began in March of 2020, a small group from our church, Saint Luke’s Presbyterian, met via Zoom with a small group from our sister church, Dodd-Sterling United Methodist – kind of a virtual breakfast and a time of fellowship and prayer. That meeting led to a what-can-we-do-to-help moment. Dodd-Sterling was starting a food ministry to serve people in its community.”
The families at St. Luke’s Presbyterian supported the food ministry by purchasing food from grocery stores when they got in touch with Urban Recipe as a partner fighting food insecurity. Urban Recipe was already packing boxes for families as a pandemic response, and the partnership was soon added. Now every Wednesday, St. Luke’s Presbyterian volunteers line up with other community volunteers to pack grocery boxes, full of non-perishable and frozen food. Each box of groceries is assembled to assist a small family through just under a week’s worth of food.
St. Luke’s Presbyterian and Dodd-Sterling United Methodist now serve 135 families every other Tuesday. “On distribution Tuesday we pick up the food at Urban Recipe and transport it to Dodd-Sterling. There we load the boxes of food into the wagons, carts, cars, trucks and vans of the families who have come to receive food,” the Moores explain. In this way, this partnership has distributed about one million pounds of food over the last five years.
But Urban Recipe’s Mobile Pantry serves more than these 135 families. Last year, Urban Recipe partnered with 7 different organizations through Mobile Pantry, serving 16,637 boxes of groceries to a total of 5,437 families and over 21,000 individuals. Most of these families came back more than once, receiving food as they needed it.
Every individual that receives food from Urban Recipe is invited to join a co-op to participate in community and receive larger quantities of food, including produce, with more regularity. But even as we encourage participation in our food co-ops, we have come to recognize that there is a place for Mobile Pantry.
We have been able to widen our impact, treating every person receiving food with dignity and respect. Just in this past year, we have worked alongside some incredible partners to fight food insecurity. The Atlanta Braves Foundation, another Mobile Pantry partner, worked to ensure every one of their families received quality protein in their grocery boxes. SPARC of Gwinnett County stepped in when a co-op in their area was no longer operational and families needed food. We were able to distribute some Mobile Pantry boxes in hurricane response through our partners at Second Helpings Atlanta. We grew our partnership with Restoring One’s Hope, enabling Urban Recipe to serve those experiencing homelessness in our city with snack bags and water.
At Urban Recipe, we have a recipe for food security. Sometimes that recipe needs to be adapted and changed based on who it is serving, and oftentimes that change is for the better. We are proud to be surrounded by partners who always keep the people we serve in the forefront of our actions.
We always need volunteers to help pack our Mobile Pantry boxes! If you are interested, sign up today!
