The Community FoodBank of New Jersey is always innovating ways to serve residents with dignity, despite recent cuts

Food drives might seem like a heartwarming holiday tradition, especially for anyone who loves and appreciates food, but donating your Thanksgiving turkey is not going to end hunger. And really, we need to stop trying. Hunger is not going away.

In fact, while many people assume pantries have bounced back since the 2020 pandemic shutdowns, food insecurity has actually risen by 65 percent in New Jersey since then. Thanks to recent government cuts, that need is going to increase even more.

What we really need to do about hunger is normalize it. For far too long, stigma has kept people in need from reaching out. And guilt keeps a lot of people from paying attention to this vital issue more than once a year.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey (CFBNJ), the state’s largest anti-hunger, anti-poverty organization, has been tackling that stigma one meal at a time. Last year, they distributed 100 million pounds of food, enough to fully stock six large grocery stores.

Who’s eating it?

“Every single town in the state of New Jersey has some food-insecure people,” says CFBNJ President and CEO Elizabeth McCarthy. Donations do not just go to the unhoused; they also help homeowners afford their mortgage—even in towns where appearances suggest everyone is well-off. They feed school bus drivers over summer break and give college students a meal other than ramen noodles (one in three college students struggles with food insecurity at some point during their education, according to McCarthy). In the majority of households served by the CFBNJ, at least one member has a paying job, and many work several.

“The sheer number of people who are just barely making it is an invisible problem,” says McCarthy. “The typical person who comes to a food pantry is someone you would say, ‘I had no idea.’”

The CFBNJ trafficks enough food to fill a warehouse in Hillside the size of five football fields, with a smaller warehouse in Egg Harbor Township. But it also serves more than just meals. For 50-plus years, the organization has been innovating ways to support communities by leveraging partnerships, increasing access with mobile pantries, and even offering culinary and nutrition training. The overarching goal, says McCarthy: “We want to make sure no one ever feels a lack of dignity in coming to a food pantry.”

“FOOD IS A BASIC NEED. IF WE CAN’T BE GOOD HUMANS AND TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER, WHAT IS IT THAT WE REALLY HAVE?”

The Food Donation Chain

The canned goods you toss in the donation bin at your local supermarket are often collected by CFBNJ, along with other individual donations and those from retail partners like ShopRite and Wawa, and taken to one of its two warehouses to be sorted. From there, they can be distributed to any of the 800 community partners in the 15 counties the CFBNJ serves. (The counties it does not directly serve are Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington, Camden, Salem, and Gloucester.)

The CFBNJ also uses monetary donations and state and federal funding to purchase food. A federal bill passed this year slashed that funding by 30 percent even though the need for the CFBNJ’s services has never been greater. Around three-quarters of a million people in the areas served by CFBNJ are food insecure, meaning they don’t have consistent access to healthy food. As wages continue to stagnate and the cost of living rises, those numbers will balloon, McCarthy says.

Older adults, who are often on a fixed income, are one of the fastest-growing groups affected. “So many seniors live in isolation,” says McCarthy. “And for them, even getting to a food pantry can be hard.” The CFBNJ has mobile pantries, and has been piloting DoorDash-style home delivery programs. But, says McCarthy, “We like people to come to the pantry. It’s more than just a place to get food.”

The CFBNJ does much more than simply distribute boxes of pasta and cans of beans. “Our goal is not only to keep people from being hungry that day or that night, but also helping [to keep] people from falling into poverty,” says Michelle Gross, the CFBNJ’s senior director of community nutrition. “A lot of people are on the edge. Food assistance means they can go to the doctor or pay their rent.”

The Power of Choice

For those who do teeter over that edge, the view may not be what they expected. Many food pantries today resemble supermarkets more than soup kitchens, complete with shopping carts and neatly stocked shelves for browsing. The CFBNJ has promoted the shift to “choice pantries” where people pick the groceries they want rather than receive identical bags of prepacked nonperishables. Gross saw the impact of choice during and after the onset of Covid, when the CFBNJ was forced to close its Egg Harbor Township warehouse to the public and started packing carts full of food for pickup instead. Despite long lines, at the end of the day she would walk outside to a parking lot littered with full cans of food people had left behind.

“I’ll never forget the day we reopened the warehouse and people could pick out what they wanted again,” she says. “They were so pumped to be able to choose what was going to work for them.”

The reasons can be cultural or practical. In one area served by the CFBNJ, residents live in motels without access to a full kitchen. “Instead of canned green beans, we try to do more ready-to-eat meals or things that can be microwaved,” says Gross. And, she adds, “Anyone with kids knows that they are not going to always eat whatever you put in front of them.” Nearly 200,000 of the food-insecure residents of the counties CFBNJ serves are children, with rates as high as 22 percent—nearly one in four kids—in Essex County.

The benefits of choice are many.

“When you operate from a choice model, there is a lot less waste,” says Gross. “People take less food because they take just what they need.” More importantly, the choice model helps remove some of the stigma associated with using a food pantry.

“So much of experiencing poverty is about the loss of choice,” says Gross. “So if we can create an environment that is dignified, where people can choose, it goes a long way toward empowering folks to have a good experience and one less thing to feel anxious about. Needing help because you’re having a hard time shouldn’t feel like you’re being punished.”

The Food Brigade, one of the CFBNJ’s partner pantries, takes this model even further. Their free community food markets in Bergen, Hudson, and Passaic counties are by appointment only. “No lines, no waiting,” says Karen DeMarco, who started The Food Brigade with her husband, Carmine, and describes herself as “an old Italian grandmother in a much younger body.” The markets resemble regular grocery stores, and shoppers get carts and can even use swipe cards to “pay” for purchases.

“It’s not just about giving out food. It’s how you give out food,” DeMarco says. Many times, she has seen how the embarrassment and stigma of taking “handouts” holds people back. Parents may fear that their kids will be teased at school; a lot of people come secretly after their spouses have forbidden them to. Often, their experience with The Food Brigade eases the initial embarrassment and stigma.

“I’ve had people thank me for giving food to them in such a way that they don’t feel bad coming for it,” she says. But to DeMarco, who works with around 500 families a week, feeding people is second nature. “Food is a basic need. If we can’t be good humans and take care of each other, what is it that we really have?” she says. “How do you not help people?”

Serving Skills for Life

In addition to its other operations, the CFBNJ runs the Food Service Training Academy (FSTA), a 14-week culinary training program based in Hillside. Now in its 25^th year, FSTA has more than 2,500 graduates, and more than 90 percent of them get jobs in the food industry. Daryl Walker is one of them. Those interested can find more information at cbnj.org.

Long before Walker started his own catering company and line of seasoning blends, he cooked for his younger siblings. He often had to, as both his parents were addicts. To earn money, he got involved with the local drug dealers in his New Brunswick neighborhood.

“No one grows up and says, ‘I want to be the biggest drug dealer in the world,’ or the best thief in the world. I did it because I didn’t have money or food,” Walker says. His criminal career landed him in jail, then a halfway house where he first heard about the CFBNJ and their Food Service Training Academy.

He started the program while still finishing his prison sentence. In his interview, Walker told the staff, “If you get me in this program, I will complete it, whatever I have to do.” He lived up to his word, catching a train and bus to Newark and arriving an hour early every day just to show how committed he was. Walker graduated at the top of his class, and the FSTA kept him on as a culinary apprentice for the incoming class. Through his connections there, he got a job as chef for a local restaurant.

When he was between jobs, he came back to volunteer with the CFBNJ “to keep my mind right, so I wouldn’t go back to the streets,” he says. He was eventually offered another staff position, which he enthusiastically accepted, and worked his way up to manager. Today, he’s in charge of training the people who are where he used to be. “This is where I started, this is like my home,” Walker says. “I needed food. But with these programs, it’s not just about providing people with the opportunity to come get a meal today. It’s putting them in a position to feed their families. This place changes lives.”

Giving What You Can

You, too, can help change lives. “Everybody needs to eat,” says DeMarco. “And everybody can help. Whether it’s one time or once a year, there are so many different ways for people to volunteer or donate.”

The CFBNJ runs on volunteers: individuals, families, school groups, sports teams, and more. Across all their locations, volunteers log 80,000 hours a year. That’s the equivalent of a 40-hour work-week for 40 years—or, basically, one lifetime.

“The people here are amazing,” says McCarthy. “We have a fleet of trucks. They could drive a truck somewhere else, probably with shorter hours and higher pay. They choose to come here and be in a position to help. Many who work here have lived experience with food security and want to give back so someone doesn’t have to go through what they went through.”

In terms of donations, money is preferred because the CFBNJ has buying power that makes those dollars go further. One of their dollars can provide three meals, or six diapers, to a resident. (While food banks focus on food, diapers and women’s sanitary products are also always in demand.) “Trying to get to children in particular is always a priority,” says McCarthy. “Even a short period of food insecurity as a child has a lifelong impact. A dollar spent on a meal for a child has a lifelong implication.”

The CFBNJ also prioritizes nutrition when making purchases, which is important because the cheapest food is not always the most nutritious. Federal cuts this year also targeted a nutrition education program that helped families who received food assistance make healthier choices. “It is a real shame, because this program is evidence-based, it makes an impact, and it is relatively inexpensive,” says Gross. “The aim was to make the healthy choice the easy choice. We look at hunger as a public health issue.”

Also on the chopping block was a grant that allowed the CFBNJ to purchase all the fresh produce the CFBNJ serves—35 million pounds per year—from local farmers. “We don’t intend to distribute any less produce, it will just be less local,” says Gross.

Cash donations that don’t go directly to food may go to initiatives like the refrigerated food lockers the CFBNJ is debuting in Egg Harbor Township to make access easier for people who can’t get to a pantry during regular business hours.

Food donations are, of course, also welcome.

“We never have an issue getting turkeys during Thanksgiving,” says DeMarco. “During the holidays, the freezers and refrigerators are usually bursting at the seams. Come January and February, things fade a bit.”

More and more people are going to need food assistance as eligibility requests change and things get harder. Not everyone can be a Karen DeMarco. Not everyone feels comfortable learning the names of the families who rely on these resources. But we should at least stop feeling uncomfortable about it. For a time, DeMarco would get half her meal at a local diner wrapped to go, then give it to a woman on the street outside. The woman was surprised because “people usually cross the street when they see me,” she told DeMarco.

And for Demarco and others at the CFBNJ, there is a personal payoff as well. “Doing what I do many days restores my faith in humanity. And I get to know I made a huge difference in someone’s life. It’s almost selfish,” she says. “I get to play Santa Claus every day.”

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey is always looking for donations, and its needs change with the seasons. Below is a list of items to consider donating during the holidays and winter months:

• Canned proteins (beans, tuna, chicken, ham)
• Shelf-stable milk
• Boxed meals (pasta, rice, cereal, potatoes)
• Canned & packaged meals (macaroni & cheese, chili, soup)
• Peanut butter
• Canned vegetables and fruits
• Diapers and period supplies
• Frozen turkeys, hams, and chicken roasters (must be frozen)
• Nonperishable holiday food items like cranberry sauce, gravy mix, and stuffing

For monetary donations made through cfbnj.org, every $1 enables CFBNJ to provide three nutritious meals, thanks to partnerships and purchasing power.

Learn more at cfbnj.org