Upcoming Closures!
The Newton Food Pantry will be closed on Wednesday, April 29 and Thursday, April 30.
Since its founding in 1984, Fair Foods has distributed more than $300M worth of food from Taunton to the Cape, to Framingham and up to Lawrence and many cities and towns in between.
During the pandemic, Fair Foods closed for four months, and then reopened on a smaller scale, reorganizing their operations at the same time: “We regrouped and got a grant from the city to hire eight people and rent a warehouse,” explains Nancy. “We went from a volunteer to a paid staff model and made sure our program was extremely safe.” At that time, Fair Foods was distributing 10,000 bags of food per week.
During this turbulent time, Nancy was approached by volunteer Alan Katzoff: “Alan’s group of volunteers picks up from us and delivers to the food pantry and to his network. He started talking to me at the start of COVID when he was trying to get food out to agencies and asked me to add the Newton Food Pantry to our list. We’re very glad that he did — all of the pantries are getting food from us every single week.”
Another program that is getting re-energized is the Fair Foods $2 Bags. This is a program where people pay $2 and get $30 worth of groceries. “We have about 38 of these sites running now. Health Centers are coming back online, and we’ll probably go back to the hospitals. We had sites at Joslin and Tufts, and several other hospitals in the city.”
And it’s not just any food. “My desire is to make folks healthier and happier with good food. No salt, no sugar, no white rice or white bread,” she says of the program, which focuses on fresh produce. “We will take non-perishables, but it’s not really what we do. We pick up stuff that will complement what we do — sometimes rice or pasta, dried beans. Things that go well with vegetables. We try to give people ingredients they can make soup with. We give them a huge variety of products that they can use to make a few gallons of soup a week. Many of them feed multiple family members, and we want people to be able to stretch the food they have.”
Like the Newton Food Pantry, Fair Foods puts a priority on providing the right foods for the populations it serves, “Our immigrant population has changed over the years. For example, we have a huge Vietnamese community in Dorchester, so we recently made a deal with a rice noodle company. Haitian families have moved into Mattapan, West Roxbury and Roslindale, so we try to provide them with plantains and bananas along with other items. The Russian community always appreciates root vegetables like rutabagas and turnips. It’s been so interesting to learn about these different cultures through the foods they enjoy.”
At the end of the day, Nancy’s work is a labor of love: “I try to teach everyone that it’s all about love, applying yourself and helping others. I hope that message gets out so people aren’t embarrassed about getting food. I hope they know there are people who do this out of love. That’s how we started. People are here because they care.”