Even curbside pickup can be treacherous in bad weather. Badger Prairie Needs Network has added a new overhang and windbreak for its food pantry pickup.
Marcia Kasieta never thought the disruption in her agency’s food delivery services would go on this long. Kasieta, as executive director of Badger Prairie Needs Network, runs a food pantry and a community meal program in Verona. From the run on grocery stores early on, to limits on the number of volunteers in their building, COVID-19 has had a “huge impact.” But coping with the pandemic has forced her agency to try things it wouldn’t otherwise have found the time, or the nerve, to do, Kasieta says, and because of that its food delivery systems have “become more efficient.”
Badger Prairie is an area leader in food recovery (rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste from restaurants, company cafeterias, caterers and grocery stores). Those efforts declined precipitously in the spring as restaurants and caterers shut down, and grocery stores couldn’t keep up with the demand. And many new logistical problems needed to be faced to both recover and deliver food safely in the middle of a pandemic.
Food donations from grocery stores have bounced back since Isthmus checked in with Kasieta in May. Badger Prairie is recovering food from Festival Foods, Miller and Sons, and area Kwik Trips.
And prepared food recovery has actually increased in volume over last year, Kasieta reports. In June, Badger Prairie launched a new partnership with Fitchburg-based Promega, which wanted to keep its culinary team on the payroll even though its employees were largely working from home. Promega now cooks 300 meals a week for Badger Prairie’s prepared meal service, low-spice comfort fare that kids and seniors tend to like, says Kasieta.
Food drives as they used to be conducted, which resulted in a lot of “random and sometimes unusual items” that needed to be checked for sell-by dates and disturbed packaging, are now a thing of the past, Kasieta says. But the good news is that sponsors of food drives — Kasieta mentions Verona Area High School, which conducts one of the largest in the area — now partner with retail locations. The partner market puts a number of the most-needed items on special; people buy and donate right at the store. “We get fresh items we don’t have to have volunteers inspect,” says Kasieta, and volunteers instead can be “all hands on deck for curbside pickup.”
A volunteer ready to deliver food to a car at Badger Prairie Needs Network is protected from the winter weather by a new windbreak.
Most, if not all, food pantries in the Madison area have transitioned to a curbside model. Instead of visitors coming into the pantry and picking needed items off shelves, they receive pre-packed boxes in a drive-through.
Badger Prairie has grown more skilled at this. The former pantry shelf area is now a staging area for packing boxes. When a car pulls up, a volunteer asks if the person has visited the pantry before and the number of persons in the household. “Anyone can come,” says Kasieta, although the agency does need to collect some data in order to qualify for federal TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) funds.
Although most of the food in the box is set, people have a choice of meat. And those with dietary concerns can make more choices now than when the curbside model started. “Early on, we were just trying to get food in the trunk of the car and were not able to address food issues like allergies,” Kasieta says.
There are now ways to customize a box. A volunteer “shopper” goes through the pantry collecting needed items (families with young children get diapers, for instance) and then “the box is out the door, it’s a loop process that takes about six minutes,” Kasieta says. Recently a volunteer with a background in industrial engineering spent some time analyzing the process and came up with suggestions that “shaved four minutes off the loop!” says Kasieta.
The number of households that Badger Prairie is assisting with food has increased 65 percent from a year ago and the number of volunteers has decreased (due to older volunteers staying at home for safety reasons), yet “the system is working smoothly,” says Kasieta.
Even after the pandemic is over, Kasieta says, they will retain some curbside pickup, because it’s allowed them to serve a group of mobility-impaired users who previously couldn’t shop the shelves: “We have increased access through the pandemic by identifying new people who need services.”
Mindful of its volunteers, Badger Prairie has constructed a permanent canopy and a windbreak to protect them from the elements as they deliver food to cars in the winter. And home delivery of food is now available to those who can’t easily get out.
Kasieta says the COVID-19 crisis not only has improved the system with regard to logistics, it’s created partnerships among other county agencies and increased “the trust among us.” She cites the banding together of area food agencies — Badger Prairie, Sun Prairie Emergency Food Pantry, The River Food Pantry, St. Vincent de Paul and Middleton Outreach Ministries — in removing geographic boundaries; they all now serve all of Dane County. This increases access to food for those in rural areas without overwhelming any one agency.
The next frontier for Badger Prairie is enabling users of its food pantry to order what they need online.
A grant is allowing them to launch a pilot online ordering program. First its inventory needs to be entered into the software system. Then they’ll see if enough people adopt the program to keep paying for the software. “We’re exploring ways to use technology to increase food access and reduce food waste,” says Kasieta.
Like Badger Prairie, Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin had to change its whole distribution model in 2020, switching from choice shopping from shelves to boxed items delivered via drive-through.
Kris Tazelaar, director of marketing and communication for Second Harvest, hopes the agency can return to the choice model. But, he says, “honestly, at this point, we’re so far from taking a look at when we can go back, it’s not even on our radar any more.”
Prior to COVID-19, 80 percent of Second Harvest’s food was donated (including food donated from grocery stores), and the nonprofit purchased the rest. In May, with the pandemic putting pressure on supermarkets, the agency was purchasing 60-65 percent of its food supply. Now, Tazelaar says, it’s about 50-50, but the cost to provide food has doubled. There are several reasons for that, one of which is they have had to hire people to work in distribution alongside volunteers because “we’re putting out 55 percent more food now,” Tazelaar says.
The good news is that grocery stores — which were being emptied in the spring as consumers started buying up more food — have been donating again. This week, for instance, Hy-Vee donated 26,000 pounds of food to Second Harvest, says Tazelaar.
Food recovery from restaurants and catering never came back this year for Healthy Food For All, a community project based at the FEED Kitchens on the city’s north side. But project coordinator Chris Brockel says that it was a big year for area farmers donating excess produce: “The best season in five years,” says Brockel. It was a good growing year for a bumper crop, he says, and Healthy Food For All was able to distribute tomatoes, greens, radishes, cucumbers and more, along with the prepared community meals they served.
While food recovery from restaurants and catering has been on hiatus, the group has turned its sights to “green catering” and what food recovery will look like after the pandemic. One of the benefits of this year, Brockel says, is that the pandemic has “gotten [food security programs] all talking. It’s been a chance to stop and reimagine things.”
Even small organizations like the Lakeview Food Pantry at Lakeview Lutheran Church on Madison’s north side have had to adapt. Lakeview also moved to a curbside delivery model. The pantry, which has operated for 40 years, is now open from 2-4 p.m. Mondays. Users have increased from 20-30 households to 44-46 households, says pastor Dean Kirst, but “supply is keeping up with demand, thanks to the generosity of the Lakeview congregation.”
Lakeview jettisoned its frequency-of-use restrictions — users can now come every week — but the downside is “the food has become more uniform, there’s not a lot of choice” says Kirst. At its busiest, the pantry might have four or five cars in line, and the process moves fairly quickly.
Linda Falkenstein
Lakeview Lutheran Church's food pantry has seen an increase in users, but volunteers usually keep the line to 3-4 cars.
The congregation also used to sponsor a monthly meal held in the church, which stopped this spring. In October volunteers decided to reinstate a hot meal, pack it to-go and pass it out like the food boxes, in a drive-through. Kirst cooks the meal himself, 200 dinners in all. “I like to cook,” says the pastor, who plans to retire at the end of this month. The first month he made veggie lasagna, followed the next month by scalloped potatoes and ham and green bean casserole. For January, he’s planning enchiladas. “On hot meal night the line gets a little long,” Kirst allows, “but it’s a smooth system and we’re pleased with the way things turned out.”
The food is all made from scratch. A hotel pan will hold “16 generous portions of lasagna,” says Kirst. Plus “we use a lot of NESCO roasters.”
While Kirst is happy to be providing much-needed meals, he is distressed with how new procedures have meant more isolation: “The contact is gone. The relationships are gone.”
