Why don’t food pantries generally carry fresh produce?
The current structure of the food aid system is that food is typically delivered from government and private sources, who are like wholesalers, and given to food pantries, which are regional or local. They can’t do fresh produce because of the large distribution chain and because of issues of storage. The pantries don’t have the capacity to store fresh or frozen produce overnight. Ample Harvest is built on a different concept. The food from backyard gardeners should go directly to the food pantry, bypassing the overall network. There’s no storage issue, because it can go from the garden to the client in one day. You just drive it over to the food pantry and it can be in the client’s kitchen that night. How Ample Harvest does work? A food pantry signs up, for free, on the Ample Harvest website with basic information about the pantry, like contact information. They can upload a photo of the pantry, and post information about when they would like deliveries, so that they are best able to
