The donation will be distributed as grants to 16 local food banks that serve under-resourced communities experiencing high rates of food insecurity.

core/paragraph

<a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america">As 1 in 8 people in the United States faces hunger,</a> Starbucks is committed to helping address the growing need for food assistance across the nation. Today, the company is announcing a $1.7 million donation to Feeding America to advance equitable access to nutritious food.

The equitable food access grants will be distributed to 16 local Feeding America member food banks located near <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/starbucks-expands-commitment-in-underserved-communities-across-the-us/">Starbucks Community Stores</a>. The grants are designed to help food banks provide nutritious food to households with individuals who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) residing in communities experiencing high rates of food insecurity.

This announcement builds on $2.69 million invested in <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/food-banks-starbucks-rethink-solutions-to-address-root-causes-of-hunger/">food bank mobile pantry programs</a> since 2019, and $45 million overall invested in hunger relief nationwide.

“For the last 50 years and still today, Starbucks believes it is our role and responsibility to help strengthen the communities we serve, and in partnership with <a>Feeding America, </a>we are tackling hunger with a focus on equity,” said Camille Hymes, Starbucks vice president of community impact.

“The equitable food access grants are a unique opportunity to combine efforts with our Community Stores across the country, which are specifically designed to support historically under-resourced communities through local partnerships and economic opportunity, to increase access to nutritious food for people that need it most.”

core/gallery

Since 2016, Starbucks has been committed to the fight against hunger through its innovative FoodShare program in partnership with Feeding America and other hunger-relief organizations and has donated, so far, nearly 34 million nourishing, ready-to-eat meals* to local food banks across the U.S. One hundred percent of all U.S. company-operated stores, almost 9,000 stores nationwide, are now participating in the FoodShare program. Starbucks has also announced a reinvestment of $100 million dollars in hunger relief initiatives over the next 10 years.

“Food is an absolutely essential building block for opportunity, whether it’s fueling success at school or work, or helping someone to stay healthy,” said Radha Muthiah, president and chief executive officer of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington D.C., one of the Starbucks equitable food access grant recipients.

FoodShare started in 2016 after Starbucks partners (employees) advocated for a program that would allow stores to donate unsold food and distribute it to people facing hunger in communities across the U.S. In response to their call for action, working with Feeding America®, Starbucks invested in research and quality assurance testing to develop a program to safely donate nourishing food to people who face hunger.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/food-insecurity">Food insecurity</a>&nbsp;remains an urgent issue due to the economic impacts of COVID-19. As more people have turned to food banks to help feed their families, Feeding America®, estimates that more than <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/coronavirus-hunger-research">42 million people</a>, including 13 million children in the U.S., may experience food insecurity in 2021.&nbsp;This national crisis disproportionately affects BIPOC communities, with 21 percent of Black individuals experiencing food insecurity this year, compared to 11 percent of white individuals, according to Feeding America projections.

core/image

“We’re grateful for partners like Starbucks,” said Muthiah, “whose support will enable us to continue learning from the individuals we serve about their needs and expand access to food and opportunity for more people across our region.”

*According to the USDA, 1.2 pounds of food is the equivalent to one meal.

Photos by Connor Surdi

The donation will be distributed as grants to 16 local food banks that serve under-resourced communities experiencing high rates of food insecurity.

Starbucks donates $1.7 million to Feeding America to support equitable access to food

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2021/07/SBX20210721-FoodEquityGrants-FeatureHorizontal.jpg

Stories to inspire and nurture the human spirit

Starbucks Stories

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/01/Photo_TBD-320x411_1-1.jpg

Starbucks Corporation

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2021/starbucks-grants-support-equitable-access-to-food/

twitter:card

twitter:description

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2021/07/SBX20210721-FoodEquityGrants-FeatureHorizontal-1024x498.jpg

twitter:image

twitter:title

One hundred percent of&nbsp;Starbucks company-operated&nbsp;stores in the U.S. are&nbsp;participating in the&nbsp;FoodShare&nbsp;program. Go with us on&nbsp;the&nbsp;journey of a&nbsp;donation box from&nbsp;a store&nbsp;in Los Angeles,&nbsp;through the&nbsp;food bank and into the hands of&nbsp;some of the&nbsp;people who need it&nbsp;the most.&nbsp;

LOS ANGELES – It’s 10:30 p.m. on a recent Tuesday night, and the cars are still stop-and-go in the drive-through line at the <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/starbucks-opens-community-store-in-watts-neighborhood-of-la/">Starbucks Community Store</a> in Watts. Inside, Antonio Flores Sanchez, the store manager, is checking his inventory of perishable food.

Sandwiches, salads, pastries, wraps. Various protein boxes filled with vegetables, eggs, cheese and chicken. He rifles through them all, filling an orange tote box with unsold products.

starbucks-blocks/pull-quote-image

“When you’re on the receiving end, every bit counts,” Flores Sanchez says, walking the box to a refrigerator in the back and putting it inside.

This is where the story of a Starbucks FoodShare donation box begins. A story about all the people and groups who play a role in addressing something as big and complex as hunger. A story about Art Ortiz, a delivery driver, who knows the difference a refrigerated truck can make, and Liz Cervantes, from the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, who sees the scale of need every day.

It’s a story about how a box like this eventually ends up in the hands of a man named Eric Perkins, a cook, who transforms the ingredients every night into a hot meal for a few dozen men participating in a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at the Long Beach Rescue Mission.

And it’s a story that happens thousands of times over, at every company-operated Starbucks in the United States.

FoodShare is Starbucks commitment, in partnership with Feeding America® and other hunger relief organizations, to making sure unsold food doesn’t go to waste. It aims to help address <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/hunger-relief/">food insecurity </a> as <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america">1 in 8 face hunger</a> in the U.S., and tries to help address some of the root causes of that hunger. To that end, Starbucks is announcing a commitment to reinvest $100 million into hunger relief over the next 10 years. This year alone, Starbucks is making a $1.7 million donation to Feeding America to advance equitable access to nutritious food among households with individuals who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) residing in communities experiencing high rates of food insecurity, such as Watts.

FoodShare also represents an exercise in the power of scale. What’s the impact of one box? In Los Angeles County alone, 592 Starbucks stores together donate around 2,000 boxes a week – about 1.2 million pounds of food so far this year. Now, scale that by almost 9,000 – the number of company-operated U.S. stores. Since 2016, Starbucks has donated close to 34 million meals* through FoodShare.

"Rescuing our unsold food is table-stakes. I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish to scale FoodShare to 100% of our stores,” says Jane Maly, a Starbucks director who has been instrumental in FoodShare’s growth. “I'm excited for what's next, and how we can consider using our scale, network, and expertise to move from feeding those experiencing hunger, to also addressing some of the root causes of hunger."

For Flores Sanchez, the Watts store manager, his part in the story feels very personal. He grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, and he ate free breakfast and lunch at school. He worked in retail for about 15 years before joining Starbucks, where he now helps lead and organize social-impact programs in his community.&nbsp;

During the pandemic, Flores Sanchez, 35, distributed food alongside a local youth mentorship organization. Next month, he’ll start collecting supplies to make and distribute hygiene kits. In the future, once society starts to reconnect, he dreams of a dental care awareness event inside the spacious meeting room that’s the centerpiece of the company’s <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/starbucks-continues-to-strengthen-communities-opens-17th-community-store/">community-store concept</a>.

“My parents, I saw how much they struggled, I saw how much we didn’t have,” Flores Sanchez says. “If you can donate this food to somebody who needs it … they can focus their money on something else. That’s going to help give them a better life. That’s my drive.

“I get paid to set up volunteer events. I get paid to connect with community leaders and provide support. I get paid to nominate local organizations for grants. I get paid to figure out what’s possible. Don’t think the only thing I can do is make coffee.”

Next stop: Art Ortiz, the delivery driver

core/heading

It’s 1 p.m. the next day, and a delivery truck has just arrived at one of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank’s warehouses, a 90,000-square foot storage and distribution center that processes four million pounds of food donations every week. Art Ortiz, the driver, waves out the window and backs his refrigerated box truck into one of the empty bays.

Starbucks uses an innovative backhaul model, which means the same drivers who drop off the supplies at each Starbucks store also pick up the donation boxes and bring them back to a central warehouse, unlocking efficiencies and possibilities that didn’t exist before.

Like Ortiz. One driver with one truck, who started his shift that day at 5 a.m. at a warehouse in nearby La Puente. He organized all the FoodShare boxes that came in the night before – including the one Flores Sanchez filled in Watts – stacked them 42 to a pallet and then wrapped each bundle for travel. The numbers add up. He hauls about 50,000 pounds of Starbucks food to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank every week.

“I used to work at a gas station and people would come in and ask for food all the time. I hated seeing people hungry,” says Ortiz, who’s been a FoodShare driver for two years, first in Washington state and now in Los Angeles. “So I'm happy that this food is going to somebody and not just being thrown away, because there's a lot of food that gets thrown away.”

Born and raised in Southern California, Ortiz, now 40, comes from a family of truck drivers. When he started delivering the Starbucks food, he found he enjoyed talking to the people at the food banks and liked the sense of purpose.

He watches as the workers unload pallets off his truck and give him back the stacks of empty boxes from the previous day’s delivery. “I love being able to help. I love being a part of providing meals to people who need it,” Ortiz says. “There’s no reason someone should go hungry with all the food that’s around.”&nbsp;

Liz Cervantes, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank

Another important number in the fight against hunger: 34-35 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s the temperature inside the huge walk-in refrigerator at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank where the Starbucks FoodShare boxes are all stored after they arrive, the same temperature inside the back of Ortiz’s box truck, the same temperature back at the warehouse in La Puente.

Perishable donated food – especially fresh, healthy options that agencies like to distribute and that families like to eat – needs to be kept that cold to prevent spoilage.

But that’s where it gets tricky, says Liz Cervantes, the food bank’s director of Agency Relations and Product Acquisitions, who has worked there for 19 years. Refrigeration is an equity issue, she says. &nbsp;

Nearly 700 smaller, local agencies work with the food bank to get food free of charge for their own programs, whether it’s a larger sub-agency or a kids’ backpack program or a senior-citizen home delivery service. But for them, Cervantes explains, “the largest challenges are transportation, number one, and then cold storage, number two. Refrigerated trucks and vans, commercial freezers, they’re expensive.”

She estimates that less than 200 of those partner agencies have the capability to keep their food cold, which means the rest have to borrow trucks, or use an SUV or the back of a pickup truck and hope for the best in the California heat, or not take fresh, perishable food at all. And these agencies are often the ones serving the people who need fresh food the most.

Even if they can somehow get the food there, smaller agencies don’t have a refrigerated storage space big enough on site – or the money to buy it – which is why Starbucks has also invested in buying refrigerated vans for hunger-relief organizations, and on innovative delivery methods like mobile food pantries.

The pandemic has only increased the need. According to the food bank’s estimates, about 300,000 people per month were serviced by the organization before the pandemic. Now, it’s at about 900,000 per month.&nbsp;

“I would say in 2020, there were definitely more people who needed food assistance, who never needed food assistance in the past, nor did they ever think they were going to need food assistance,” says Cervantes, 48. “Because of the pandemic, I think people are more aware that anybody can fall through the cracks.

“There are families who are behind on bills, who lost work, who are going to need food assistance for a couple more months, if not years, and we can be that backbone.”&nbsp;

It’s Thursday afternoon at the Long Beach Rescue Mission, and the kitchen is hot. Large, flat pans with 150 servings of chicken have been baking since noon. That’s when Eric Perkins started preparing dinner for the people who live in the mission as part of a rehabilitation program, or just come by at mealtime to eat.

The day before, he’d driven up to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank to pick up the delivery – 250 pounds of orange Starbucks FoodShare boxes. Someone from the mission drives up five times a week to bring back the donated FoodShare items.

When the delivery arrives back in Long Beach, the kitchen staff opens the packaging and separates the food into like piles. The sandwiches will be reheated and passed out at breakfast or lunch. The hard-boiled eggs, cheese and greens from various ready-to-eat boxes are saved in a fridge until there’s enough to feed everybody. The greens will make a big salad soon.

On this day, Perkins’ focus is on the snap peas and carrots that come from the Starbucks protein boxes. It’ll make the perfect side to his chicken, donated from a local grocery store chain, seasoned with a red rub recipe he refuses to divulge. Usually, he can find enough peas and carrots to feed everybody if he waits through three days of deliveries. Sometimes he goes big with a brown-butter glaze; today it’s a simple sauté in butter.

Born in New Jersey, Perkins, 52, was placed with foster families at a young age, and as a teenager became addicted to crack and alcohol. As an adult, he lost his job after a failed drug test. He was clean for seven years, scared straight after he started coughing up black phlegm, but then relapsed after his brother died. He was in a bad place.

“The last week before I came here, I was in a hotel and decided I wasn’t ready to die,” Perkins remembers. “So I came here to sign up for the program. I didn’t want to die.”

He got clean the second time, in 2019, through the mission’s New Life Program – a strict one-year residential program for drug and alcohol addiction with wrap around services such as legal aid, education, classes on interpersonal relationships, work therapy, daily chapel services and bed checks. And he impressed the staff enough to get hired on as a cook after he graduated. &nbsp;

Around 4:30 p.m., three volunteers show up to help serve dinner. After hugs and handshakes, Perkins directs them to their stations behind a small service counter, next to heaping piles of rice, beans, chicken and snap peas and carrots. Some of the food is sent across the street to the Lydia House, where women and children who receive the mission’s services live, and some is reserved for the walk-up crowd who’ll come by later that night, just to eat.

Nick Roberts, the mission’s volunteer program coordinator and another graduate of the New Life Program, leads announcements for the 40 or so men in the room. He welcomes several who recently joined the program, assigns a few others after-dinner tasks, and then talks excitedly about the big half-marathon coming up this weekend. He’s the coach of the mission’s running team; it’s part therapy, part reward.

After a short prayer, the men start to line up in front of Perkins, who greets them one at a time, with a smile or a joke or a bit of conversation. He hands over a hot plate of food to each one across the counter.

“This basically is what the program is, feeding the community,” Perkins says later, after the food’s all gone. “For me, this food, it means a chance, to try to give them something to enjoy. I don’t just say, ‘Here take it.’ I try to make it look different, make it taste different. Nourishment. I know what it’s like to be hungry. So someone coming in here, I just try to treat them with dignity and respect in the best way I can.”

*According to the USDA, 1.2 pounds of food is the equivalent to one meal.

Starbucks barista in black ballcap shows back of black FoodShare t-shirt

Go with us on the journey of a donation box from a store in Los Angeles, through the food bank and into the hands of some of the people who need it the most.

Meet four people on the journey of Starbucks FoodShare donations box

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2021/07/SBX20210721-FoodShareJourney-FeatureHorizontal.jpg

‘This food, it means a chance’: Meet four people on the journey of Starbucks FoodShare donations box

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2021/follow-the-food-meet-four-people-along-starbucks-foodshare-journey/

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2021/07/SBX20210721-FoodShareJourney-FeatureHorizontal-1024x498.jpg

Growing up, Alyssa Hammond looked up to Diana, Princess of Wales, who used her position to raise money and awareness for numerous humanitarian causes – leftover landmines from wars, abandoned children living with HIV/AIDS, stigma against lepers. 

When Alyssa was promoted several years ago to Starbucks district manager in Stockton, Calif., she started to meet local families struggling financially. And she found her own cause to champion – fighting hunger.

“Someday I hope I am a good-will ambassador for something amazing,” Alyssa remembers thinking. “Why can’t I do that at work?” 

So, alongside other Starbucks partners, she began volunteering at Second Harvest Food Bank in California’s Central Valley, part of the <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/">Feeding America</a> network, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief organization. Starbucks teamed up with Feeding America in 2016 to launch Starbucks® <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/20-million-people-fed-through-starbucks-foodshare-program/">FoodShare</a>, which delivers unused, nourishing Starbucks food to nonprofits around the U.S.

Alyssa volunteered at mobile food pantries, took supplies to tent cities and led company meetings at Second Harvest’s conference room to keep the community’s food insecurity at the forefront of her store managers’ minds. She was recently invited to sit on Second Harvest’s board of directors. 

With the global coronavirus pandemic causing record unemployment and food insecurity skyrocketing everywhere, Starbucks is working with Feeding America to get food to people who need it most. 

The Starbucks Foundation is donating $1 million to Feeding America’s Covid-19 response fund and $25,000 to the Food Bank for New York City. Starbucks, as part of its hometown support efforts, is also giving $250,000 to Northwest Harvest in Seattle. 

core/more

It’s a company-wide commitment, says Jane Maly, Starbucks FoodShare program manager. Starbucks is making sure all unused food and ingredients from its stores, distribution centers and Princi kitchens are ending up with foodbanks or other local community partners. 

“Now, more than ever, there should be no food thrown away,” Jane says. 

An estimated 37 million Americans are already struggling with hunger. During the pandemic, food banks are facing a worrisome combination of spiking demand and decreasing donations and volunteers, who can’t get out because of quarantine measures and concerns about personal safety. An estimated 17 million more people may face hunger over the next six months issues due to the impacts of COVID-19, according to Feeding America’s forecast. 

“Good neighbors protect themselves and their communities and they do what they can to help each other. &nbsp;There are people near you right now who are in need of a helping hand,” says Claire Babineaux-Fontentot, Feeding America’s chief executive officer. “I anticipate that all of us will face hardships over the coming weeks, but I also believe that as we do, we will not lose sight of the humanity we possess, and that solidarity will triumph over adversity.” 

For Alyssa, her mission to help ensure no food goes to waste means getting Starbucks food from her 14 stores to local foodbanks and churches; trucks usually pick up the unsold food every night. It means contacting the sheriff’s department so deputies can take it to senior citizen homes. It means constantly staying in touch with anyone and everyone in the community who needs to eat, and delivering items personally when necessary. 

Alyssa, who started with Starbucks 17 years ago as a teenage barista, is most worried about her community’s kids, who might not be getting enough food at home with schools closed and so many parents in the area having lost jobs. She’s still haunted by the memory of a malnourished child she met during a tent city visit. 

“All those kids who don’t have access to food, that should be on everybody’s mind,” she says. “As a leader, these are the things I should be doing with my position. This is how I influence my people to be better people.” 

Starbucks is also supporting local food banks with resources and logistics, reassigning trucks that usually supply stores but are now idle because of widespread closures. Drivers with Quality Custom Distribution (QCD) in Kent, Wash., and Penske Corp. in San Diego, are helping deliver food for food banks in their communities instead.

Malcolm Williamson, 31, is one of those drivers. He drives a 20-foot box truck for QCD and supplies Starbucks in Western Washington. It’s been tough at work, with less product to move because of the store closures, and at home too, he says. Malcolm has two children, including a 1-year old. His older son would be deep into basketball games and tournaments by now, but all that’s been canceled as well. 

“It’s just been a hit on everybody, it’s brought everything to a halt, financially, personally,” says Malcolm, the son of a retired Air Force airman. “But I just feel like it’s so important for everybody to come together. It takes something like this to take a step back and think about the next person. It just means a lot for everybody, for families in need. It’s a great thing, to help out, in any way we can.” 

starbucks-blocks/story-grid

As food bank need spikes, Starbucks and Feeding America fight hunger together - Starbucks Stories

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2020/04/SBX20200416-Foodshare-Feature.jpg

As food bank need spikes, Starbucks and Feeding America fight hunger together

With the global coronavirus pandemic causing record unemployment and food insecurity to skyrocket, Starbucks and Feeding America are committed to getting food to those who need it most.

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/as-food-bank-need-spikes-starbucks-and-feeding-america-fight-hunger-together/

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2020/04/SBX20200416-Foodshare-Feature-1024x498.jpg

Corinne Crane laughs now, a pained and tired laugh, thinking about how she put away money for retirement and her kids’ college fund. She remembers being a “food snob” and throwing food away just because she didn’t like it. 

But that was before her divorce. She had a hard time finding work and she needed to stay home anyways with her two young autistic sons. She ended up in a toxic living situation with roommates who stole her groceries. And before long, her savings were gone.

“Life kind of brings you down a few notches,” said Crane, 37. “I cry a lot more. I feel very frustrated sometimes. I guess I feel very unprepared. I didn’t see this coming.” 

Today, Crane and her boys, 10 and 6, are starting over in a one-bedroom apartment in Veterans Village in Las Vegas, which provides housing, food and other services to veterans and their families. Crane’s ex-husband was in the Navy.

As she wrestles with her past and tries to figure out the best path forward, chief among her day-to-day concerns is this: What do I feed my boys? 

Starbucks FoodShare program is helping answer that question. FoodShare, which launched in 2016 in partnership with Feeding America, packages eligible unsold food every evening, and delivers the meals to non-profits around the U.S., including Veterans Village. Every morning, people line up starting at 6 a.m. for sandwiches, salads, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt cups and pastries. 

Starbucks has a goal to rescue 100 percent of the unsold food available from its more than 8,000 U.S. company-owned stores by the end of 2020. Currently around 60 percent of stores participate, said Laura Olson, director of global social impact for Starbucks.

To date, more than 20 million meals have been donated through the program. Each of those meals represents a person who didn’t go hungry that day, said Olson.

“Knowing that our surplus food, that would otherwise go into the garbage, is feeding a family or child or veteran is incredibly satisfying, especially knowing that our partners across the country make it happen,” she said.

“We as a country have a perception of our prosperity that doesn’t make room for the reality of the struggle that many of our neighbors have,” said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, chief executive officer of Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief organization. 

Feeding America, a nationwide network of 200 food banks and 60,000 pantries, meal programs and soup kitchens, partners with Starbucks to connect FoodShare donations with local food banks and people who need them. Two million people volunteer with the non-profit. 

One in nine Americans struggle with hunger, Babineaux-Fontenot said, including approximately 11 million children and 5 million senior citizens. “There is not one county or parish in this country that does not have food insecurity inside of it,” she said. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

Arnold Stalk, the founder of Veterans Village and the son of a World War II Navy veteran, also said many who are homeless or in need are invisible. “People who are couch surfers or living in their cars or trucks, that number is indefinable,” he said.

Stalk created Veterans Village in response to a request from a veteran: his dad, who had served in the Navy during World War II. &nbsp;The two were talking shortly before his father died seven years ago and, “he said ‘I don’t like the way our veterans are being treated. We don’t show the respect to them they deserve. We have award ceremonies, but are we OK with our veterans sleeping on our streets?’”

Then he asked Stalk, who worked in architecture planning and redevelopment, to do something about it.

Today, Veterans Village has five campuses open in Las Vegas with plans for three more, so veterans and their families will have a safe place to live and enough to eat. 

“The thought of a veteran in the morning eating (donations of) Starbucks food … that is a miracle to me,” Stalk said.&nbsp;

Food affects every aspect of life

Babineaux-Fontenot, of Feeding America, learned about food insecurity early on while growing up in Opelousas, La. In the fall of 1963, her mother, Mary Alice Babineaux, heard about two children in a neighboring town suffering from neglect and abuse. She drove over, picked them up and brought them home, beginning a remarkable decades-long legacy of service to children in need that ultimately ended with 108 children – by birth, adoption and foster care – being a part of the Babineaux home.&nbsp; 

“Through that prism, I was able to see very directly the impact that a lack of access to nutritional food has on people, the impact it had on the frail bodies of my siblings as they joined my family,” Babineaux-Fontenot recalled. “I also was able to witness the impact that consistent access to nutritious food had on their bodies, and not just their bodies, but their brains and spirits. I watched siblings blossom upon receiving that access.

“It’s a truth I’ve known my whole life,” she said. “I’ve never existed without an awareness of what hunger actually looks like right here in America and the impact food has on people.”&nbsp; 

Being hungry is about much more than an empty stomach. Not having enough to eat is also associated with disease, fatigue and poor mental health. Hungry children suffer at school and are more likely to be hospitalized, research shows. And with many Americans living paycheck to paycheck, they might need to make hard choices around competing priorities like food, rent, insurance, bills and medication. 

Crane had once traveled the world as a military spouse before she arrived at Veterans Village. Her husband worked aboard submarines. She spent time all over the U.S. and Madagascar. She was used to the lifestyle; she was born in Arizona in a military family. 

She decided to homeschool her children, which meant she could take care of their special needs herself. But it left her without much job experience. She didn’t have much of a support network. Crane is working with a Veterans Village case manager now, trying to acquire some computer skills and navigate social services.

“The stuff that Starbucks sends is critical in my household,” she said. “I imagine it’s got to be critical in other households too.”

More than a chocolate croissant

Connecting people with the food they need is the point of FoodShare, Olson said. “This is food clients may not otherwise be able to afford, whether it’s in a backpack for lunch or heading off to work and they need to take something with them.”

Shortly after the program began, she said, Starbucks received a letter from a woman who had been married with children, leading a comfortable life. She used to take her children to Starbucks once a week for a chocolate croissant to have some special time with them. Her circumstances changed and she had to quickly leave her husband and home. She was living with her children in transitional housing and felt so sad that she was unable to give her kids a sense of normalcy, she wrote. But then one day at the shelter’s cafeteria, she saw the Starbucks FoodShare donations come in – including chocolate croissants.

“That day she was able to sit with her kids in the cafeteria and have that moment together again,” Olson said.

Olson said she often thinks of all of the people involved in getting a meal to someone in need. She thinks of how the idea for the FoodShare program came from Starbucks partners who wanted to find ways to donate unsold food at the end of the day. And she thinks of how Feeding America made it possible for the food to be collected and distributed.

“Without that simple act of Starbucks partners packaging up unsold food at the end of each day for donation, those 20 million meals would not be served and would not benefit our communities,” she said.

Feeding America estimates that about 72 billion pounds of edible food is thrown away every year, not including household waste. This year, the organization rescued and redistributed approximately 3.6&nbsp;billion pounds of food to those in need. The number is so vast it seems hard to fathom. 

But Babineaux-Fontenot, of Feeding America, believes the problem is solvable. She’s encouraged by emerging leaders who expect to do good in the world; productive relationships with companies around resources, time and thinking; and a vast network of big-hearted people working on different parts of the problem. 

“It’s easy to think, ‘There’s no way I can possibly do anything about that. It’s too big. It’s too complex,’ ” said Babineaux-Fontenot. “Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And you won’t be alone.” 

20 million people fed through Starbucks FoodShare program - Starbucks Stories

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/09/SBX20190913-FoodShare-Header.jpg

20 million people fed through Starbucks FoodShare program

Starbucks has a goal to rescue 100 percent of the unsold food available from its more than 8,000 U.S. company-owned stores by the end of 2020.

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/20-million-people-fed-through-starbucks-foodshare-program/

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/09/SBX20190913-FoodShare-Header-1024x498.jpg

1 in 8 people in the United States don’t have enough to eat. While that number can seem overwhelming, even small acts can make a big difference. Here’s what you can do.

Anna McCuistion has experienced the full circle of a food bank, first as a volunteer who helped raise money to keep the shelves stocked and, more recently, after a leukemia diagnosis, as a client.

“There are a lot of people like me,” said McCuistion, 61, who lives on a fixed income. “When I go grocery shopping, the money doesn’t go very far. And sometimes I have to buy medication.”

One in eight people in the United States faces hunger, <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america">according to Feeding America</a>. When it comes to children, one in six doesn’t know where they will get their next meal. The need can be heightened during the summer, when classes are out and kids lose access to free or reduced meals at school.

When it comes to making a difference, even small acts can have a big impact – whether it’s donating food or volunteering a skill, said Rudy Valencia, director of operations at the Second Harvest Food Bank, serving San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties in California.&nbsp; 

“We always tell people if they have a talent they can share, whether it’s data entry, social media or anything, please get involved,” he said. “Every little bit makes a difference.”

Valencia and others working toward ending hunger offered these tips on simple things people can do in their daily lives to help:

core/list

16 simple things you can do to end hunger - Starbucks Stories

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/06/SBX20190627-Mobile-Pantry-2b-Featured-Image.jpg

16 simple things you can do to end hunger

1 in 8 people in the U.S. don’t have enough to eat. While that number can seem overwhelming, even small acts can make a big difference. Here’s what you can do.

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/simple-ways-to-help-fight-hunger/

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/06/SBX20190627-Mobile-Pantry-2b-Featured-Image-1024x498.jpg

When school is out, the hunger gap opens for too many children who rely on subsidized meals at school. Twelve million children in the United States don’t have enough to eat, but Starbucks is striving to help change that by funding mobile pantries that bring free, fresh food into communities.

All she wanted was to check out a book on dragonflies. 

Kirsten Casteel was 12 when her science class was assigned to research bugs. She chose dragonflies as her topic and went to the school library to learn more. At least she tried. Her class was on the first floor; the library was on the second. And, on that day, shortly before summer began, she was so tired the stairs between seemed insurmountable. 

“I remember taking one step and then feeling like I couldn’t lift my leg high enough to get it up the next step. So, I sat down,” she said. 

What almost no one knew was that at home, she didn’t have enough to eat. And without fuel, she didn’t have any energy. 

At an early age, Casteel knew what no child should have to know – that real hunger wasn’t just a growling stomach, that it deepened into an ache, and that once the gnawing in your stomach subsided, it caused your head to ache, your mind to slow and turned into an exhaustion that settles all the way into your bones. Sometimes it can cause you to pass out. Other times it feels like your heart is pounding out of your chest.

It hadn’t always been that way. Casteel, a Starbucks store manager in San Antonio, Texas, remembers an early childhood with a vibrant family. But when she was 7, her mother, Carole, died of a brain tumor, leaving three young girls and a husband who was so distraught that he fell into a deep depression and soon left his career in the military. After that, money was always tight.

During the school year, the three girls could get free meals at school. But on the weekends and the summers, they were on their own. “For most kids, summer was a great thing,” she said. “But for us, we didn’t know where we’d eat.”

That’s the case for too many children across America. One in six children in the United States doesn’t have enough to eat, <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org">according to Feeding America</a>, a national hunger-relief non-profit organization. And, when summer arrives, many who rely on free or reduced lunches at school are left not knowing where the next meal is coming from.

Food bank trucks loaded with fresh produce and more that go into communities to give food away, called mobile pantries, are helping to fill that gap and feed some of the more than <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics/#foodsecure">40 million people in the United States who face hunger</a>. That number that includes 12 million children and 5 million seniors.

“I always tell people, don’t focus on the number, focus on the need,” said Rudy Valencia, director of the <a href="https://www.shfb.org/">Second Harvest Food Bank</a> in Manteca, Calif.

A year ago, Second Harvest launched its mobile pantry program, which is designed to meet people where they are. Multiple times a week, the truck goes to schools and other places in the community where people can select fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other items.

“This morning we had 250 people at the first location and then 167 at the second,” Valencia said. Each person in line often represents three or four more people at home, he said. As with many food banks, funding is always a concern. 

To help meet that need, Starbucks is investing $1.5 million in mobile pantry programs for 17 food banks around the country. Some of the food banks currently have mobile pantries and the funding will help support them and allow them to do more deliveries. Others will be getting their first mobile pantry trucks.

“It was such a relief to find out (about the Starbucks donation),” said Valencia. “It gives us the green light to help the program keep going.”

Starbucks is committed to helping feed the hungry through donations, said Jane Maly, senior manager leading the Starbucks FoodShare program. In the past three years, the company has partnered with Feeding America to give away 15 million meals through <a href="https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/foodshare">FoodShare</a>, which donates unsold, nourishing food from Starbucks stores to local food banks, including Second Harvest.

But the company wanted to do more, said Maly. So, she started asking food banks a simple question: What would you do if you had unlimited resources? 

For many, the answer was to bring food to the people who need it most – and meet them where they are at – through mobile pantries.

Maly said she sees it as part of a ripple effect. “The foundation is FoodShare – donating our own surplus food. Next, we invest in food banks’ infrastructure and building capacity. Then, how do we start using food banks as community hubs?” she said. “With each ripple, the impact gets a little bit bigger.” 

Many of the food banks are in so-called food deserts, areas without access to a grocery store – and many residents have no real way to get to one. For those living in poverty without access to a car or bus, even getting to a food bank can be an insurmountable obstacle.

“There is a lot of hunger in our town – and in the country – that people just don’t realize,” said Jay Simmonds, assistant superintendent in the Ceres Unified School District in California’s Central Valley. There, 80 to 85 percent of the 14,000 students in the district eat subsidized meals, he said. 

“People will come to school and they don’t look poor. They are dressed in clean clothes. It’s doesn’t jump out that they are hungry and a lot of times they are.”

‘Have you eaten breakfast?’

Before Casteel’s mom got sick, they used to play games of “let’s pretend.” She and her daughters would pretend they were best friends going on an adventure – sometimes as astronauts headed into space. Other times they’d draw or paint. When her dad was deployed, the three girls would rotate taking turns sleeping in their mom’s bed with her.

Before she died, Casteel’s mom made a last request of her: to watch out for her sisters. “I did my best to make sure they had what they needed,” Casteel said.

Sometimes at home, she’d lead them in a game of pretend, like they once did with their mom. They’d take whatever food they could find and imagine it was a grand meal. “We’d take a can of beans and squish it on some bread and call ourselves master chefs,” she said. 

She made sure that her sisters didn’t skip any of the free meals offered at school – breakfast and lunch -- since they didn’t know if there’d be much to eat at home. School was their respite. 

Before her mom died, Casteel remembers happily playing outside all summer. After, she’d try to stay inside because the heat would drain her and she’d pass out. In hindsight, she says, she realizes it’s because she didn’t have enough to eat.

She thinks about the difference a mobile pantry would have made in her life. “It would have had a really big impact for me and my sisters. We would have been able to think, ‘We’re hungry and this is available and let’s get something to eat.’”

Simmonds, the assistant school superintendent, said having access to mobile pantries comes down to one thing for the families in his district. “It means health,” he said. “Things are tenfold better when kids are fed. When you don’t feed kids, they are slow and their brains aren’t working. When you’re hungry you don’t think about anything else.”

Kids who don’t have enough to eat are more likely to likely to face developmental delays, repeat a grade in school and have social and behavioral issues, according to Feeding America. 

“We see a lot of kids where when they act out the first question you ask is ‘have you eaten breakfast,’ and many times they haven’t, said Simmonds.

Two years ago, Simmonds was able to secure federal funding to provide meals to school kids even during the summers. Now, with Second Harvest’s mobile pantry going to schools, their parents can also get groceries for them to eat at home.

Before that, he sometimes saw kids dropping out of school to get a job and help earn money so the family could buy food.

Feeding families helps end that cycle, said Maly. “One of the things we really care about is how can we get to the root of the issue and nip it. If kids’ bellies are full, they can learn, graduate and go on to get jobs.”

Many of the families Second Harvest serves are the working poor or people who have experienced a reversal in circumstances, Valencia said. “For whatever reason, the money just doesn’t stretch far enough.” 

After Anna McCuistion, 61, pays her essential bills, she’s left with $100 a month to cover food, gas for her car and personal items. “When I go grocery shopping the money doesn’t go very far,” she said. “At times I have to buy medications.”

For years before she became a client of Second Harvest, she was a volunteer fund-raiser for the food bank. A few years ago, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Now McCuistion, 61, lives on a fixed income and is limited on what she can eat. A friend persuaded her to start going to the mobile pantry. “Healthy food is so expensive,” she said. “But the food (from the mobile pantry) fills my refrigerator. There’s fresh fruit and vegetables. I have better choices.”

Having healthy options – and knowing someone has their back – is the whole point of the food pantries, said Valencia. 

“You’ll see a dad standing in line and you give him 50 pounds of groceries and it’s like someone has lifted 25,000 pounds from his shoulders,” he said. “We are meeting people where they are at.”

foodshare

Starbucks donates $1.7 million to Feeding America to support equitable access to food

‘This food, it means a chance’: Meet four people on the journey of Starbucks FoodShare donations box

As food bank need spikes, Starbucks and Feeding America fight hunger together

20 million people fed through Starbucks FoodShare program

16 simple things you can do to end hunger

When summer means hunger, mobile food pantries help close the gap