HONOLULU – The Pantry has reopened in Kalihi and is giving out free food every week for those in need. Feeding Hawaii Together has been distributing food in Hawaii for 20 years. It has been the Hawaii Foodbank’s largest distributor of goods in the old warehouse in Kakaako, which closed in 2016.
Now, The Pantry is urging those who need food to use its cutting-edge online store to order food that will be delivered to their cars.
The pantry is located at 2522 Rose Street and has a new 13,000-square-foot facility with 2,200-square-feet of shelving (with capacity for more) and a 12-foot by 26-foot refrigerator and a 12-foot by 18-foot freezer.
The new ThePantry.org website provides an easy technology for clients to shop online and then pick up their order at a contactless walk/drive through.
Those who qualify for assistance can select groceries and pick them up weekly. Go to thepantry.org for more information. Your income should not exceed 185 percent of the poverty level for the state.
Feeding Hawaii Together is a non-profit organization targeting the ALICE families (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed). With the COVID-19 challenges, additional people will be in need.
The innovative program has safety and efficiency in mind. Shoppers select what groceries they need online. Then one or two days later, they have a time to drive by the warehouse where their order is placed in their cars.
Feeding Hawaii Together is looking for cash donations to fund the groceries for clients. “Every week we are seeing an increased need in the community and we ask for your help in financial donations to purchase food or become a trained volunteer,” said Executive Director Jennine Sullivan. “We are seeing an unprecedented demand as many people are now unemployed.”
Food pick-ups are scheduled on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for orders that are placed a few days prior.
Feeding Hawaii Together is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It provides the only weekly e-commerce free food pantry distribution program in the country. For more information, visit ThePantry.org
Who we are:
❖ The only free food pantry in Hawaii to serve its clients weekly with a safe, online shopping and walk/drive thru pick up experience.
❖ The only free food pantry in Hawaii to serve its clients weekly with a safe, online shopping and walk/drive thru pick up experience.
❖ Feeding Hawaii Together, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has been distributing free food for 20 years.
❖ It is one of the largest food pantries in the State of Hawaii and the only food distribution program to employ a “grocery-store style” setup which enables qualifying individuals to“shop” from an assortment of food weekly.
What do we do:
❖ Provide free food to those in need.
❖ Distributed 3 million pounds of food annually – approximately 25% of Foodbank’s 12.5 million pounds of distributed food from our old warehouse in Kakaako.
❖ Corps of trained volunteers assist with processing orders, “shopping” for clients, and vehicle/cart loading at our warehouse.
The Facts:
❖ 161,270 people or 1 in 9 struggles with hunger in Hawaii every year.
❖ 161,270 people or 1 in 9 struggles with hunger in Hawaii every year.
❖ 53,540 of these or 1 in 6 are children.
❖ 221,731 Hawaii residents have filed for unemployment between March 1 and April 26, 2020 due to the global pandemic of COVID-19.
COVID-19’s Consequences:
❖ Record unemployment numbers have forced Hawaii Families to make trade-offs between rent, utilities, food, medication, and basic necessities just to survive in Hawaii.
❖ Record unemployment numbers have forced Hawaii Families to make trade-offs between rent, utilities, food, medication, and basic necessities just to survive in Hawaii.
❖ Some may qualify for government assistance, but this alone cannot meet the growing needs of children, families, elderly, the working poor, and homeless.
❖ COVID-19 will particularly hit Hawaii’s 37% of Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) families whose income is above Federal Poverty Level but not sufficient to afford the average annual Household Survival Budget which is more than double the national family poverty level (2017 United Way ALICE Report).
The Pantry leverages technology and innovation to be ahead of the curve in responding to COVID-19:
With social distancing part of Hawaii’s new normal, it is imperative that food distribution services minimize close contact between clients. We launched our e-commerce website thepantry.org on April 1, which provides an online order system for clients and we are in pre-production of
The Pantry app.
❖ Works with any smartphone or web browser. Clients order food online 24/7, with volunteers packing each order to enhance food safety.
❖ Works with any smartphone or web browser. Clients order food online 24/7, with volunteers packing each order to enhance food safety.
❖ Eliminates food waste with clients selecting the food they want.
❖ Clients pick up orders through walk-up or drive through appointments – minimizing contact, reducing wait time, and diminishing site congestion.
❖ Clients without smartphones can place orders onsite through volunteers with iPads or by calling The Pantry via a landline.
❖ Dramatically increases numbers served and can be scaled-up based on number of volunteers.
❖ Captures reporting data and includes features that teach clients health and nutrition info.
❖ Creating partnerships for future weekly satellite pick up points on the island.
Our Vision: Eliminate hunger in Hawaii by 2025.
❖ Our action plan to enact this vision: share our app with the 58 other food pantries on Oahu and the neighbor islands to coordinate and facilitate distribution on a state-wide scale. Partner our clients with local agencies that can support, guide, and teach them skills needed for their next phase in life. Leverage our aggregated captured data with state and local officials to influence policy and create structural change.
Enabling our vision
To meet the escalation in demand for food assistance, we are in need of financial support in the following ways:
1. $15,000 per month to purchase food. We are required to pay the Foodbank for the food we distribute from them. In addition, we work with and pay local food distributors and farmers to access food that they are not able to distribute during the crisis.
2. $18,000 per month for approximately 6 months toward operating expenses to enable us to open for longer hours on multiple days throughout the week to meet increased demand for our food distribution services.