Hurdles complicate delivering food to Westchester’s hungry

The refrigerated box truck that Our New Way Garden obtained through a grant is able to hold hundreds of pounds of just-picked produce, extending the life of the vegetables. MARTIN WILBUR PHOTO

By MARTIN WILBUR

This article is part of a comprehensive series on hunger action in Westchester County, developed in partnership with The Rivertowns Dispatch, which examines the rise in food insecurity and highlights the people and organizations delivering solutions to fight hunger. 

Millions of pounds of food are moved each year to feed the population in Westchester that has trouble affording fresh, nutritious food to put on their kitchen tables. But the process of acquiring, organizing, packaging and transporting that food is a complicated and arduous undertaking that highlights the challenges of providing assistance beyond government social safety nets.

Whether it be pantries, food recovery outfits, Westchester farms or the Elmsford-based Feeding Westchester, which supplies about 175 pantries and other organizations with some of their supply, a well-coordinated effort is essential to get the food into the hands of the people who need it most.

While there appears to be plenty of food available, the bottom line for the agencies and organizations is that there can always be additional items obtained, stored and distributed.

“I would say the most challenging aspect of the operation is trying to get more food,” said Ryan Brisk, Feeding Westchester’s vice president of operations and procurement. “I don’t think anyone at Feeding Westchester is under the illusion that we have enough food to truly meet the needs of the county. So, we’re just trying to get our hands on every piece of donated food that we can, sourcing as aggressively as we can, negotiating pricing, just trying to make sure we’re accessing as much food as we possibly can for our partners and ultimately residents in our county.”

Last year, Feeding Westchester estimated that it provided about 17.5 million meals, although the actual need in the county is likely more than twice that volume, Feeding Westchester Chief Operating Officer Tami Wilson told The Recorder last month.

To accomplish the task, Brisk oversees a multi-pronged operation that includes a three-member food procurement team, an operations team of seven or eight people who work in the distribution center and 10 drivers for its trucks used to transport the food.

The procurement side is responsible for all the donated food coming in through its food recovery programs. Feeding Westchester partners with about 75 restaurants, groceries and other food-related businesses to pick up excess product, Brisk said. They also work with some corporations around the county that donate food as well, he said.

In addition, procurement is in charge of Feeding Westchester’s federal contracts, which includes the Emergency Food Assistance Program, a program started in the early 1980s by the USDA to dispose of surplus foods held by the Commodity Credit Corporation. It purchases more food from a wide assortment of vendors who have been vetted, Brisk explained.

The operations team is called the “material handler.” Team members unload the trucks from the deliveries, retrieve the food from the nonprofit’s inventory based on the orders received from its agency partners and prepare it for distribution.

Brisk said nearly every day, Feeding Westchester’s 10 trucks are out on the road, crisscrossing the county to make its deliveries to soup kitchens, pantries and schools along with picking up excess food from the retail shops. Feeding Westchester also started its agency enablement program more than two years ago where it helps coordinate local pantries with retailers, so excess food can be picked up more quickly, cutting the workload for the drivers and reducing the time it can get the food out the door, he said.

Finally, there is an inventory team that monitors what is in stock and the expiration dates, and puts together food boxes and kits for some of the programs the organization runs. 

Brisk said Feeding Westchester uses historical data to see how much food it needs to buy. Typically, at least half of the food it distributes has to be bought.

“We’re hoping to have the donated food catch up to that, so that it is budget-friendly and we can do more,” Brisk said.

Farming is part of the solution

Scattered throughout the county are farms, most of which contribute to the volume of food donated for the food insecure population. For example, the county-owned and operated Hilltop Hanover Farm covering 187 acres in Yorktown Heights supplies 25% of its more than 50,000-pound harvest to local pantries in northern Westchester. The small-acre Sugar Hill Farm at Westchester Land Trust’s Bedford Hills headquarters, staffed largely by volunteers, grows organic produce for thousands of servings distributed annually through the food pantry at the Community Center of Northern Westchester. 

Tucked into the headquarters campus of PepsiCo in Purchase is a community garden that grows a vast array of vegetables and donates to several partner organizations in lower and central Westchester. Amy Benerofe, co-founder of Our New Way Garden, the umbrella organization that operates the roughly half-acre garden at PepsiCo with the corporation, said 2024 was the most robust harvest in its 16-year history. Our New Way Garden also has agreements with several other landowners that supply additional produce.

More than 43,000 pounds of food was grown at all of the locations combined last year, about 34,000 pounds of which was donated to partners Meals on Main Street in Port Chester, Free People’s Market in Mount Vernon, and the Thomas H. Slater Community Center and Ridgeview Church, both in White Plains. 

Benerofe also has a relationship with Reach Academy in West Harrison, working with its students and supplying its pantry since many of the students’ families are in need of assistance. 

Much of the remainder of the produce is sold at a weekly Wednesday farmers market near the garden that is open from spring until November.

Benerofe said the operation has produced a 46% year-over-year increase in food donated last year. Building it gradually is part of the winning formula, she added. “As you grow, you get really good at one thing, and then you can start to add,” Benerofe said at her office adjacent to a greenhouse near the garden.

Seeding takes place in the winter inside the greenhouse followed by planting in the spring. Seasonal crops are harvested starting in June until late October to mid-November, Benerofe said.

But she concedes that farming and distributing that produce is challenging. She is just one of three employees on staff, and depends on the partner organizations and herself to transport the food. She adds high school and college interns in the summer to assist.

“It’s hard. I struggle in the spring and in the fall when all the seasonal interns go back to school or before they get here,” Benerofe said. To increase production, she hopes to partner with a local university or college “with a professor who would be interested in doing an actual class that would have interns coming and working the farm in the spring and the fall.”

Through a state grant, Our New Way Garden was able to buy a refrigerated box truck that is on the grounds at PepsiCo to help store the produce. Much of the fruit Benerofe procures is through other farms or orchards.

Rachel Kent, PepsiCo’s sustainability and social impact senior manager, said the garden on its campus fits well with the company’s mission.

“We like to say, yes, we are a food and beverage company, but PepsiCo is an agricultural company,” Kent said. “Farms are at the center of everything that we do, so this program aligns very well.”

Other challenges

For the leaders of two other organizations fighting food insecurity in Westchester, one of the biggest challenges is lack of manpower. Missy Palmisciano, co-founder of County Harvest, a food recovery organization that picks up excess inventory from retailers, and JoAnn Reed-Stokes, the director of the Hastings Youth Advocate Program, which oversees the Hastings Food Pantry, agreed that the need for more volunteers is one of their primary concerns.

Distribution day at the Hastings pantry is Wednesday, requiring preparation to unload, unpack and package the food for recipients. Food often comes in a day or two before it is distributed from Feeding Westchester, local supermarkets and various organizations.

“We need a lot of assistance with beforehand work, behind-the-scenes type of work, and just like having enough help around. That is where we sometimes struggle,” Reed-Stokes said.

Palmisciano said having volunteers making the runs to go to the markets and restaurants is essential to delivering fresh food to pantries. Then there are the pantries that could also use larger refrigerators, freezers, or more shelving to store the food County Harvest recovers.

“They might not have enough refrigerated space to take all the donations that we could bring them,” she said.

That sentiment is echoed by Brisk at Feeding Westchester. Despite the volume of food moving in and out of its doors, if he could snap his fingers, he would like to house the operation in “a brand-new space that we could design to maximize efficiency rather than having a building and having to retrofit it would help.”

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Supermarkets pitch in to combat hunger 

By JEFF MORRIS

Millions of dollars of food distributed by local food pantries in Westchester originates in supermarkets, with much of it coming through either Feeding Westchester or County Harvest.

DeCicco & Sons, which has stores in Westchester including Bedford, Somers and Brewster, donates through County Harvest. A spokesperson for the chain said County Harvest picks up at every store almost every day. 

“Year to date we have donated $1.5 million worth of product, and last year we donated $1.3 million worth of product,” the DeCicco spokesperson said.

Missy Palmisciano, president and founder of County Harvest, told The Recorder that her organization has about 75 to 100 volunteers who are active every month, and pick up from about three dozen locations. In addition to DeCicco & Sons, other supermarkets where they pick up donated groceries include Trader Joe’s, which has three locations in Westchester, and several ShopRite stores.

Pickups occur every day except Sunday, with trucks making about 80 to 85 scheduled runs per week, said Palmisciano. with the same driver completing the same run every week. 

Donations go to a different agency each day of the week. Clients listed by County Harvest include The Pantry and Hillside Food Outreach in Mount Kisco, and the Community Center of Northern Westchester, temporarily located in Bedford Hills.

Palmisciano noted County Harvest’s workers are all volunteers. She said her organization works cooperatively alongside Feeding Westchester, which previously turned over some of their smaller runs to County Harvest. 

County Harvest has a detailed set of guidelines by which donors have to abide to ensure all donations meet food safety standards. Those include the fact that County Harvest volunteers are not approved food handlers, and are not permitted to pack, wrap or rewrap any food items.

Feeding Westchester has similar guidelines regarding food storage and refrigeration. One of its large supermarket donors is Stop & Shop, which partners on a corporate level with the parent organization, Feeding America, across its five-state footprint of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

A Stop & Shop spokesperson said, “Our 13 stores in Westchester County donate regularly to Feeding Westchester through our Food Rescue Program. Each week, a Feeding Westchester truck visits every Stop & Shop in the county to collect rescued food, both perishable and nonperishable items, for distribution to families in need.”

In September alone, donations helped create 39,663 meals through Feeding Westchester’s Retail Recovery Program.

In fact, this week all Westchester Stop & Shop stores have donation bins available as part of the Feeding Westchester Stuff-a-Bus Bee-Line Food Drive, in partnership with the Westchester County government. The drive runs through Sunday, Oct. 26. All food collected will be distributed through Feeding Westchester’s network of 175 local partners.

Another major supermarket chain, ShopRite, which opened a new store in Mount Kisco last year, also has a corporate initiative through its ShopRite Partners in Caring program. Its New Jersey-based parent company, Wakefern Food Corporation, says it donates more than $3.2 million, over 5,000 tons of donated product and more than 10,000 tons of holiday turkeys to area food banks each year.

In addition, Wakefern facilities and stores also donate “not quite retail perfect” but perfectly edible, nutritious produce to local food pantries, according to company officials. 

The Mount Kisco ShopRite donates food for multiple pickups each week to the Community Center of Northern Westchester and The Food Pantry, as well as Feeding Westchester, a manager said.

Martin Wilbur has more than 30 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including having previously served as editor-in-chief of The Examiner.

This editorially independent series on hunger action is presented with support from The PepsiCo Foundation.