food rescued

Table to Table volunteer unloading cantaloupes at Community Food Bank.

T2T Receives Donation of 10,000 Cantaloupes!

Anne Langebartels/Food On the Move Newsletter, News /food rescued /

July 18, 2025

A truckload of 10,000 cantaloupe made its way to T2T on the morning of July 18th through our food transportation industry rescue initiative!

This estimated 30,000 lbs. of melons is headed to T2T through a partnership with Farmlink, an organization that connects farm products to communities facing food insecurity and who was also responsible for last year’s epic 40,000 lb. potato recovery. The logistics of moving this quantity of food was be made possible through partnership Lineage Logistics, Farr Transport, and the tireless work of the T2T volunteer network and staff members.

Today, cantaloupes were distributed by the pallet to North Liberty Food Pantry, Coralville Community Food Pantry, CommUnity Food Bank in Iowa City, Open Heartland, and North Liberty Summer Lunch & Fun. On Monday, we’ll distribute to many more neighborhood pantries in our area and share several pallets with Riverbend Regional Food Bank to deliver to folks across Eastern Iowa.

Table to Table food recovery efforts provide the majority of fresh produce in the Johnson County food access network. We’ve worked for the last three years to grow food transportation recovery relationships. This food rescue opportunity comes at a time when food insecurity is on the rise and the recent federal budget reconciliation bill makes deep cuts to the food safety net. As we continue to respond to impacts of these cuts, donations like this will be more important than ever.

Stay tuned for details on a cantaloupe distribution pop-up stand early next week! Like our work? Make a donation or sign up to volunteer!

Stories from the Route

Anne Langebartels/News, Volunteer Spotlights /food rescued, operations, volunteers /

April 30, 2021

Michelle Hills cheeseball donation — Michelle after a route last year that collected hundreds of cans of cheeseballs.

As we wrap up volunteer appreciation month, we can’t think of a better way to express our appreciation for our fantastic volunteers than by sharing stories from their T2T volunteer shifts in April. These stories illustrate volunteers’ resourcefulness, good humor, and enthusiasm to go above and beyond in the name of food rescue. We truly could not recover nearly 2.5 million pounds of food each year without them.

Just last weekend, volunteer Michelle Hills finished her regular food rescue route collecting a few hundred pounds of food. While she was out, another volunteer called in and couldn’t do their route. Michelle noticed when she got back from her regular route that nobody had recorded any donations for that route and offered to do that one too! Without her, we may have lost the opportunity to deliver more produce, meat, and a variety of other foods to Coralville Community Pantry that morning.

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Nancy with so many food boxes — Nancy pulls a cart full of food ready to load

Mary Palmberg and Nancy Weber picked up a huge haul at Walmart & Costco a couple of weeks ago. Mary says, “No surprise that we barely — and only due to our years of practice — fit all that frozen bakery and (heavy) frozen meat into the cooler section [of the van].” On top of that, they received lots of whole pineapples.

Nancy with charcoal donation — All loaded and charcoal briquettes to boot!

At the next stop, a couple of hundred pounds of charcoal briquettes! So, upon delivery, Mary made a deal: “We told Hải at the Coralville Pantry that she could have some of those nice pineapples if she took some charcoal briquettes…the number of pineapples dependent on the number of 20# bags of charcoal. She laughed — though she also took charcoal along with her pineapples.”

The good-natured flexibility of our partners to accept whatever crazy variety of food (and BBQ accouterments) that arrive on the truck is key to our success. “We were amazed that we’d passed off all the charcoal — and everything else — by the end of the route,” Mary says.

We’re impressed by the packing and sorting skills our veteran volunteers have. It’s an underrated talent that ensures no fruit is left behind!

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Taveon loads cabbages into T2T van — The staff help stack the second tower of cabbage into the van.

On another of what Mary calls an “exciting & rewarding day on the road”, it was looking like a “light” food rescue day with two carts of grocery, meat, and bakery…until a very helpful and friendly store employee, Taveon, led the team back to a cooler with towers of cabbage and bananas. So many, it warranted a call back to base to see if T2T had the capacity. After getting the affirmative, they had to do their magic again to fit everything in the van. On their way out, Mary asked about a cart of miscellaneous items including toys and Easter baskets that weren’t for sale anymore, so they took those too! Hải Huỳnh, Coralville Pantry Community Projects Coordinator, shared with the volunteers that those extra toys and gifts they asked for would be put in birthday bags for kids.

Mary and Nancy made stops at North Liberty Pantry and HACAP Head Start and then an additional stop at Shelter House where they delivered a box of bananas and quite a few cabbages. The cook was excited about preparing the cabbages for dinner that evening.

T2T recipient partners and our volunteers are truly remarkable, and it’s clear that the admiration is mutual. Mary and Nancy return from their route celebrating their interactions with Hải: “What a super (& strong!) woman she is!” and, “She’s fantastic!”

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Kenn Bowen loads veggies — Kenn packs healthy prepared foods into our boxes.

Kenn & Pat Bowen, volunteers since this past September, shared photos of their beautiful haul from New Pioneer Coop. Fresh veggies and healthy prepared foods were a welcome and delightful delivery that day!

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And finally, volunteer Charlotte Fairlie passed along an impactful message she received from a community member as she was picking up food at a stop on her route just a few days ago:

“A woman rolled down her window as she was pulling out of her parking space and said,

‘I just want to thank all of you for everything you are doing and all the work you put in. I have been in the position of having to use your services, and I want you to know how valuable it is and how much it’s appreciated.’”

As Charlotte says, “Her message is for all of us.”

Farm Gleaning Feature: Blueyah Blueberry Farm

Anne Langebartels/News /food rescued, local food /

September 4, 2020

As a way to increase our fresh food recovery efforts, this summer we kicked off our local farm gleaning program with Blueyah Blueberry Farm near Iowa City. The family-owned farm typically allows visitors to pick their homegrown blueberries to take home and enjoy, but they changed things up a bit this year.

“We were hesitant to open our farm to the public this summer, even with COVID precautions in place—but we also didn’t want to ‘donate’ our entire blueberry crop to the birds and raccoons. When we asked our customers what they thought we should do, someone mentioned Table to Table’s new gleaning program, and it was the perfect solution,” say Jenna and Eric, the farmers at Blueyah. “Not only does Table to Table serve the entire county, but they also recruit and train berry-picking volunteers. Plus, they’re staffed by some of the kindest, most generous people we’ve ever met. Now, our fresh blueberries are finding their way to people who need them, instead of to the local bluejays (who don’t).”

We gleaned 70 pounds of blueberries at Blueyah this season – which is A LOT of blueberries! Gleaning volunteers picked the berries, then portioned them into individual containers for easy distribution at food pantries. Local families could enjoy a package of fresh blueberries grown just a few miles away. Plus, blueberries are packed with antioxidants – making them a very healthy snack. Thanks to Jenna and Eric’s generosity and our gleaning volunteers’ hard work harvesting the berries, many of our neighbors who don’t have affordable access to fresh produce enjoyed nutritious local blueberries this summer.

Write Bites! Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program Pays Snacks Forward

Table to Table/News /food donor partners, food rescued /

May 18, 2020

What happens to a school group’s snack fund when school is canceled? It goes to providing snacks for the community! The Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program (NWP) donated $200 from their snack fund to help Table to Table rescue food that can provide vital support to community members all over Johnson County. This donation came from the group’s belief that “A good meal, shared with others, is emotionally nourishing, too, and since we can’t gather right now, we wanted to find the best way to pass that spirit along!”

The University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program's 2019 graduates celebrate during a garden party hosted by faculty member Bonnie Sunstein at her home in Iowa City, Iowa. (Bradley S. Pines) ALL rights available to NWP 2019 class. — The University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program’s 2019 graduates celebrate during a garden party hosted by faculty member Bonnie Sunstein at her home in Iowa City, Iowa. ALL rights available to NWP 2019 class.

The NWP students take up a collection at the beginning of each school year to establish their snack fund. This money typically goes towards keeping their snack jar filled through the year and catering a graduation celebration in the spring, but due to the physical closure of the University of Iowa campus, they were left with the decision to carry over the funds or put them to use helping the community. They chose the latter, much to our delight!

The Great Yogurt Boon of 2017

Table to Table/News /food rescued, operations /

July 25, 2018

The impact of our grant from Frontier Co-op to purchase a new refrigerated vehicle and one year lease on our refrigerated “big truck” can be best illustrated by the “Great Yogurt Boon of 2017”. On a Wednesday in mid-September we received a call that a local food warehouse had 8 pallets, nearly 9000 pounds of yogurt to donate. Nine thousand pounds of yogurt and the expiration was more than a month away! What a windfall! In fact, dairy is one of the most needed items for agencies serving the hungry in our community.

However, 4 tons of dairy that needs to be refrigerated presents its own challenges. Since no single partner agency can store or redistribute food in those quantities, we needed a storage and distribution plan. With our two new vehicles, we were able to accommodate this challenge with little difficulty. Our new 22ft refrigerated had the capacity to transport and keep cool all 8 pallets. We were able to use the truck as a temporary warehouse and work over the course of several hours to distribute this high value food to more than 15 local programs.

Even so, at the end of the day, we still had 800 pounds of yogurt remaining, which was not likely to fit in the 7 household sized refrigerators we have back at Table to Table. So, we transferred the remaining yogurt to the new transit van we purchased with the help of Frontier Co-op. We can actually plug this new vehicle’s refrigeration system into a wall outlet, thereby expanding our refrigerated warehouse space to 350 cubic feet. By storing the yogurt for the next 36 hours, we were able to find additional recipients in need of dairy. Local after school programs received more than 50 cases to serve as snacks and small pantries with minimal storage capacity received a second delivery after distributing the first load of yogurt early in the week.

These organizations served around 3,000 individuals with this single delivery. Without these new vehicles, this nutritious and high need food would have either gone to waste or been diverted away from those in need right here in our community. Thank you to Frontier for helping keep good food from going to waste and feeding 19,500 hungry people.