Dignity: We believe that people and food have inherent value and deserve to be treated with respect. About half the food we collect is “short-dated”, which does NOT mean bad or old. Our volunteers and those at our food access partners put a lot of effort into ensuring the food quality is good before it hits the shelves. As part of this process, volunteers identified a reduction in quality of produce from a grocer on their route. The T2T team put together visuals that demonstrated preferred quality for different types of produce and shared it with this store (and others). As a result, this partner has become one of our highest performing grocery partners in quality AND amount of produce!
Love: We show love for our neighbors through food and none demonstrates this more clearly than our friend and colleague José who works in the produce department of one of our grocery partners. Sometimes, food for donation is pulled from the shelves after our pick up time. With limited space, it’s likely the store would need to toss it before the next pick up. José couldn’t bear to see it go to waste and began delivering it directly to T2T on his lunch break. That’s the kind of dedication and love for community we need!
Collaboration: This year, we saw the effects of a strong network in several ways.
When Coralville Pantry’s cooler and freezer went down, T2T offered up extra cold storage space that saved thousands of dollars worth of food and kept pantry doors open.
CommUnity Food Bank staff used their equipment to unload several large scale deliveries to T2T from trucking companies. This benefited not only their clients, but helped T2T share the bounty with partners across the county.
So many of our partners stepped up to distribute more than 40,000 pounds of potatoes, including partners like Open Heartland who set up special distribution hours to accommodate the opportunity.
Using our big truck on a regular weekly route, T2T transported 266,000 pounds of food from HACAP Food Reservoir to CommUnity Food Bank.
Appreciation: On a route last year, a volunteer learned that one of our biggest partners had food we weren’t receiving because the donor didn’t think we had the capacity. T2T staff leapt into action, set up meetings with the donor, and restructured several routes. Volunteers weathered significant changes to their routes and food access partners adjusted their volunteer schedules to accept the influx of food. All of this effort resulted in a 72% increase in food from that donor! An impossibility without volunteers, partners, or our talented team.
When you picture the mission of T2T – do you see a volunteer walking the aisles of a grocery store or loading up in the parking lot? A cargo van packed to the brim with boxes of food, or a T2T vehicle making deliveries around town? This year, more than 100 volunteers each week dedicated 8,300 hours to our route based food rescue program.
Routes represent 66% of the food we recover, but did you know that nearly 1 million pounds of food comes from our expanded food rescue initiatives? This includes harvesting from local farms, gardeners, food processors, warehouses, and even the food transportation industry. By expanding our team and building new partnerships, we said “yes” to more food rescue opportunities than ever before. Take a look below at the results of a few key initiatives.
This letter appears in Table to Table’s 2024 Impact Report, hitting mailboxes soon!
We’re fortunate to have had so many opportunities to capture food for our neighbors this year as the food safety net is stretched to breaking. We’ve seen firsthand how rising grocery prices—up 25% since early 2021(USDA)—have put additional strain on our neighbors. Looking back at our data from 2019, pantry visitors often needed food resources once per month or several times per year.In comparison, recent research by Johnson County public health shows that 79% of surveyed food pantry visitors reported they are now visiting a pantry 2 or more times a month. Meanwhile, SNAP benefits enrollment in Iowa is at a 15 year low. Low SNAP enrollment can be a product of multiple factors, including application & recertification barriers, low benefit amounts, as well as asset tests and income limitations that prevent more people from qualifying. One thing is for certain, we know it is not because there are less people facing hunger in Iowa. The pressing need for food in our community spurred our staff and volunteers to work harder and dedicate more hours to food recovery than ever before. As a result, we delivered 2.7 million pounds of foodthis year, an increase of half a million pounds! Sixty percent of that additional food was produce, protein, and dairy.
We celebrate the dedication of our volunteers and partners and the impact of all the food they’ve distributed. We also celebrate you, our community, providing such a crucial foundation to our work. Although food rescue is unpredictable, it is thanks to all of of you that we are primed to respond to every food opportunity and the changing needs of our community. And while every pound of food matters, our work is so much more than that number. We recover food and deliver on our mission with a core set of values that center people, community, and the strong connections we build and maintain. These values guide our efforts to reclaim food, reduce food waste, and address food insecurity while promoting respect, empathy, collaboration, and love in all aspects of our work.
With your support, we can continue to fight food insecurity and build a more connected, compassionate community.
Nicki Ross
Executive Director
Table to Table bridges the gap between abundance and hunger. Our mission is to increase food equity and reduce environmental harm by collecting and redistributing surplus food through partners to people who can use it.
We couldn’t have accomplished all that we did in 2024 without our dedicated team of volunteers, board members, staff, and AmeriCorps members.
volunteers and those at our food access partners put a lot of effort into ensuring the food quality is good before it hits the shelves. As part of this process, volunteers identified a reduction in quality of produce from a grocer on their route. The T2T team put together visuals that demonstrated preferred quality for different types of produce and shared it with this store (and others). As a result, this partner has become one of our highest performing grocery partners in quality AND amount of produce!
