The Good Food Box Manual: How to Start a Progam in Your City

The

Good Food Box: A Manual How To Start A Program In Your Community First Edition by

Mary Lou Morgan and Kathryn Scharf Second Edition by

René Biberstein and Mark-Jan Daalderop

FoodShare would like to thank the Heifer Foundation International for making this second edition possible. We would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Ministry of Health for the first edition. The opinions, results, and conclusions presented in this manual are those of FoodShare, and no official endorsement by the Ministry of Health is intended, nor should one be inferred. We gladly authorize the reproduction of portions of this manual for non-profit, educational purposes.

© 2008 FoodShare Toronto Published by: FoodShare Toronto 90 Croatia Street Toronto, Ontario Canada m6h 1k9 416.363.6441 [email protected] www.foodshare.net ISBN 978-0-921030-28-7

Table of Contents • • • •

Executive Summary.................................................................................................................5 Preface and Acknowledgments by Zahra Parvinian. .................................................................7 Introduction to the First Edition by Mary Lou Morgan.............................................................10 Introduction to the Second Edition by Debbie Field. .............................................................. 13

Understanding The Good Food Box: Is This The Right Program For Your Community? • • • • • •

History of The Good Food Box.............................................................................................. 17 Philosophy. ...........................................................................................................................18 Good Food Box Guiding Principles........................................................................................ 19 Week in the Life of FoodShare’s Good Food Box Program......................................................20 Our Customers: Who are they and why do they purchase The Good Food Box?....................22 Good Food Markets, Another Option. ...................................................................................24

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program • • • • • • • •

Choosing Goals for Your Program. ............................................................................... 25 Identifying Your Target Group and Making the Program Suit Their Needs.................. 27 The Fresh Produce Distribution Industry .................................................................. 28 Competitive Analysis................................................................................................ 29 Marketing Plan – The 5 P’s....................................................................................... 31 Management Structure............................................................................................. 35 Stages of Expansion.................................................................................................. 36 Financial Plan........................................................................................................... 41

Guide To Produce Sourcing And Management

• • • • • • • •

Produce Sourcing..................................................................................................... 45 Buying Practices.......................................................................................................46 Box Contents and Produce Mix................................................................................48 Ordering Spreadsheets and Technique...................................................................... 51 Presentation of Boxes............................................................................................... 51 Sample Box Contents............................................................................................... 52 Produce Management Basics.................................................................................... 53 Organic Good Food Boxes.......................................................................................54

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Human Resources and Volunteer Coordination • • • • •

Volunteers......................................................................................... 57 Staff. ................................................................................................. 57 Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators.............................................. 58 Packing Day Volunteers.....................................................................60 Coordinating a Packing Day............................................................... 61

The Good Food Box Newsletter • • • •

Why Add a Newsletter to the Good Food Box?. ........................................... 63 Writing a Newsletter That Speaks to Your Customers.................................... 63 Newsletter Resources................................................................................... 64 Does the Newsletter Get Read?.................................................................... 64

Profiles of Other Good Food Box Programs • Montreal...................................................................................................... 65 • Saskatoon.....................................................................................................67 • Innisfil.......................................................................................................... 68

The Evolution of the Good Food Box

• The Origins of the Good Food Box Program...................................... 71 • FoodShare Programs 2008................................................................. 75

Appendices • • • • • • • • • • • •

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Good Food Box Coordinator Package...........................................................81 Sample Ordering Spreadsheet...................................................................... 84 Frequently Asked Questions. ....................................................................... 85 Produce Buying Policy..................................................................................87 Good Food Box Order Form. ...................................................................... 89 Produce Storage Guidelines......................................................................... 90 Good Food Box Sales Figures.......................................................................91 Local Produce Statistics. ...............................................................................93 Good Food Box Yearly Sales Trends..............................................................97 Good Food Box Newsletter........................................................................101 Good Food Box Flyer.................................................................................105 Annual Good Food Box Farmers Meeting Flyer...........................................107

The Good Food Box

Executive Summary

T

he Good Food Box is a non-profit fresh fruit and vegetable distribution system operated by FoodShare Toronto. It runs like a large buying club, with centralized purchasing and co-ordination. Individuals place orders for boxes with volunteer drop-off coordinators in their neighbourhood and pay between $12 and $32 for their box, depending on the version they choose. FoodShare’s customers purchase top-quality fruit and vegetables from local farmers and the Ontario Food Terminal, which volunteers pack into boxes at FoodShare’s warehouse. Each box contains the same mixture of produce, though the contents change with each delivery, depending on what is in season and reasonably-priced at the time. FoodShare’s truck drivers deliver the boxes to the neighbourhood drop-off locations, where the local volunteer coordinators ensure that customers pick up their boxes. Established in 1994 with just 40 boxes, the Toronto Good Food Box program now distributes just under 4,000 Good Food Boxes each month. The Good Food Box Guide is designed to provide direction to individuals and organizations who are interested in using this type of system to improve food access for themselves and people in their communities, particularly those living on a lowincome. It also encourages community development, promotes healthy eating and supports the local agricultural economy.

The guide begins with a look at the history, philosophy and principles of the Good Food Box program. This is followed by information on how to market the Good Food Box, how to find funding, how to promote the program and what equipment and resources are needed. Also in the manual are sections on produce buying, volunteer management and creating a newsletter. Examples are provided of newsletters, promotional pamphlets, profiles of other Good Food Box programs, sample box contents, work rhythms and growth mechanics. Since 1994, dozens of other Canadian communities have developed their own versions of the Good Food Box, responding to local needs and circumstances, all working towards increasing access to good, healthy food.

Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Over the last 14 years, Good Food Box organizers have learned many lessons about the philosophy and logistics of running a large-scale distribution system, with both centralized coordination and community-based input and support.

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The Good Food Box

Preface and Acknowledgments July 21, 2008

W

hen I was growing up in Iran, my grandmother always said that we should eat a rainbow of vegetables each day. Her advice to “pick vegetables of different colours” stemmed from her belief that eating all of the colours of the rainbow would keep us healthy. I think of my grandmother’s message each week and try and create this rainbow in each and every Good Food Box that we pack – purple eggplant, dark green kale, orange carrots and red strawberries.

The Good Food Box takes a rainbow of skills as well. Back home in Iran, I studied business management and here in Canada, I became a social worker. This combination of skills has been an asset in managing the social enterprise that is the Good Food Box. It takes the mind of a business person and the heart of a social worker to understand that while our project is first about increasing food access and is therefore about providing a social support, we have to operate as much like a business as possible. I want to thank our staff for all their hard work in making the Good Food Box program a success. Thanks to our office staff, Delsie Hyatt and Cafeon Nembhard for their terrific customer service and their outreach efforts that have helped the Good Food Box and Fresh Produce program grow and shine. Thank you to Moorthi Senaratne for his work in the warehouse where he patiently supervises our interns, receives produce from farmers and helps coordinate packing day. Thank you to Mark-Jan Daalderop for his work ordering produce from over 15 different suppliers. This is a difficult job, somewhere between science and art, because of the many conflicting interests in making the box a success.

Preface and Acknowledgments

A rainbow of people makes the Good Food Box happen. Our staff and volunteers are from all over the world, are of all ages, are from all backgrounds and have many colourful personalities. In the old auto-body shop of an abandoned high school, which we have transformed into a bright and clean warehouse, we pack the Good Food Box with an amazing team.

Thanks to Bill Jenei who coordinates FoodShare’s Fresh Produce and Good Food Box deliveries. He has helped enormously in improving the efficiency and reliability of our service. Thanks also to our drivers: Edward Scott, Rajah Subramanian and Marcus Rak, and Driver’s Helpers: Doug Whittle and Ron Hardy who courageously battle the chaotic streets of downtown Toronto to deliver fresh produce to communities. preface and Acknowledgments

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Many thanks to the Good Food Box team for their dedication and all the colours that each staff member gives to the program. Thanks also to Daniel Hoffman, the Youth Program Coordinator, for the care he takes in integrating all the youth interns into the Good Food Box program. Thank you to Jesús Gomez and Sybil Pinnock, of the Kitchen and Catering programs, for the amazing home cooked snacks and lunch they prepare for everyone. No packing day would be possible without them. Thank you to Mike Nevin, our Composting Facilitator, who makes sure that all of the organic waste generated by the Good Food Box program is turned into soil and used by our Urban Agriculture team in community gardens. Thanks to Angela ElzingaCheng, Ravenna Barker, Ayal Dinner and Ian Aley for their work in animating Good Food Markets, bringing fresh produce stalls to neighbourhoods throughout the city. The work of promoting healthy food in our schools is enhanced by the outreach efforts of the student nutrition team. Thank you to Lori Nikkel, our Student Nutrition Manager, Meredith Hayes, our Field to Table Schools Coordinator, and the Toronto Partners for Student Nutrition staff members: Fiona Bowser and Ulla Knowles. Thank you to Gloria Padilla, FoodShare’s Financial Manager, Nora Long, our Good Food Box Bookkeeper, Zola Dyer, Donor Relations and Foodlink Coordinator and Anna La, Fundraising and Volunteer Coordinator, who all maintain the financial and fundraising infrastructure of the program. And of course, a big thanks to Debbie Field, FoodShare’s Executive Director, for all she has done to develop the Good Food Box program over the years and helping us secure funding for its operation. The Good Food Box could not happen without the cooperation of all of our staff and all of the hundreds of volunteers who help us pack the boxes each week and coordinate the drop-off locations. We also want to thank Heifer International, especially Colleen Ross and Chris Kruger of Heifer Canada, for the funding of this second edition of the Good Food Box Manual. The first edition, originally funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health, was so popular that it went out of print and we have been photocopying it for years for those that request a copy. We first began working with Heifer International seven years ago when they funded our bee project, which has been so successful. We thank Heifer Canada for funding us to “pass on the gift” of how to organize a Good Food Box program.

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The Good Food Box

The vision of Heifer International is a world of communities living together in peace and equitably sharing the resources of a healthy planet. Through Heifer’s “passing on the gift” philosophy, communities and families share their livestock, knowledge, resources and skills, creating and expanding networks of hope, dignity and self-reliance. Heifer works in Canada, and around the globe, towards social, economic and political justice. Heifer International commits to helping families, communities, organizations, partners and movements in their struggle to achieve food sovereignty and sustainable livelihoods. It supports sustainable food systems, the recovery of cultures, local knowledge, spirituality and the environment, fostering justice and equity through participation, solidarity, and advocacy. For more information please see www.heifer. org. Mary Lou Morgan and Kathryn Scharf wrote the first edition of this manual and have since moved on to new jobs and new opportunities. Mark-Jan Daalderop and René Biberstein took the lead on this second edition. Many thanks to Mark-Jan and René for all their hard work on making this manual happen. Thanks to Anna La and Adrienne De Francesco for their meticulous copy-editing. A special thanks to Laura Berman of GreenFuse Images for designing this manual and producing beautiful photographs for FoodShare. In my years at FoodShare I have had the pleasure of “passing on the gift” of how we operate the Good Food Box to many people across Canada. Just recently we have been supporting a group in Montreal who have started a box program there. It is so satisfying to know that others want to start a Good Food Box program in their community. We hope this manual answers your questions and that you are successful in your process. Good luck in creating your own Good Food Box program; may it be a rainbow, filled with healthy produce, beautiful experiences and wonderful people.

Zahra Parvinian Good Food Box and Kitchen Program Manager July 21, 2008

preface and Acknowledgments

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Introduction to the first edition November 5, 1997

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n many ways, the Good Food Box is FoodShare Toronto’s seminal project. All the other FoodShare programs build on its strengths, echo its philosophies and circle around its rhythms. With virtually no advertising besides word of mouth, we have grown from the original 40 boxes packed in February of 1994 to selling just under 4,000 boxes each month.

Introduction to the first edition

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I believe our strength lies in the food itself. Eating a gorgeous shiny purple eggplant or a sweet apple, the sight of a farmer proudly presenting mixed baskets of yellow and red heritage tomatoes, picking a beet from the dirt, a meal shared – all of these experiences have the power to awaken our senses, feed our basic need for food and connect us to each other. These experiences are especially important to people in the city, who may be living in stressful conditions, are disconnected from nature and separated from each other. Time and time again, I have seen volunteers who come to pack the Good Food Box go home after six hours of hard physical work exhausted but exhilarated. So often these volunteers make a point of thanking us on the way out the door. Thanking us for the chance to meet and eat with others, for the chance to do meaningful work and for the opportunity to contribute to our community. On the receiving end, mothers report their children’s excitement when the Good Food Box arrives, people proudly phone to tell us of their success with the latest recipes and people comment on the stories of where our food comes from. I believe the colours, quality and seasonal nature of the produce is directly responsible for these good feelings. Working with others, being connected to our neighbourhoods and to a larger network of likeminded people, also enhances our well being. At FoodShare, we didn’t start out to create an alternative food distribution system. After all, Canada has chains of powerful and efficient retail grocery stores and thousands of successful corner stores. Produce from all over the world is available to us and Canadians spend on average, only 14 percent of their income on food; this is the lowest amount in any developed country. Canadian farmers produce food efficiently and there is often excess food produced. Canadians also export billions of dollars worth of food to other countries. These facts would lead us to believe that everything is fine with our food system and that in Canada no one should be hungry or malnourished. In fact, many children go to school without breakfast. In Toronto, 120,000 people visit food banks each month; food banks have opened at universities and even in farming communities. Reports of high cholesterol and obesity in young children are constantly surfacing.

The Good Food Box

Most of these problems cross all income levels. In the long run if everyone improves their diets, our population’s health would improve and health care costs would fall. Can programs like the Good Food Box make a difference in the food, health and agricultural system? What are the issues and challenges we face? Over the years at FoodShare we have listened to parents struggling to feed their families and learned that the reasons are complex. Paying for food is a problem when you don’t have enough money, unless you are a very skilled shopper and a resourceful from-scratch cook. A common myth is that a roof over your head and food in the cupboards are peoples’ first two priorities. In reality, when there is not enough money, food doesn’t make it onto the list of priorities. It becomes the elastic band for all other pressures. Families pay for shelter and emergencies first. Rent, a hydro bill or medical expenses come before food. Field trips at school or running shoes sometimes take precedence over home cooked food, as parents want their children to belong. Changing personal situations like cuts in welfare rates, caring for sick or aging family members and the rising costs of living can leave people with less money to buy food. Some people may not have a place to cook, store or grow food. People may be ill or have personal situations, which make it hard for them to get or prepare nutritious food. Some people have lost the opportunity to learn skills that used to be passed down through the generations; immigration and family breakdowns are some of the reasons this happens. We all know we should eat better. The Canada Food Guide, dietitians, The Cancer Society and The Heart and Stroke Foundation, all talk and write about improving our diets, but The Good Food Box delivers. The increasing popularity of the Good Food Box reinforces our own strong belief that this straightforward approach works. People who have received the Good Food Box more than 6 times report an increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and a positive change in acknowledging that a healthy diet is possible even on a limited budget. Parents and children are overwhelmed with advertising for fast foods. The food industry spends millions to promote processed food because that is where profits are highest. We are promoting the benefits of fresh produce, food in its most basic state, prepared and eaten at home. The newsletter gives recipes, nutritional information, stories about the history of food, explanations about where our food comes from and how it is grown. We have developed strong relationships with local farmers and our large volume purchases have earned us respect. Our primary focus is to purchase food that is in season and is grown as close to home as possible. There are several reasons for this. Local food is generally more affordable and money is not spent getting the food to a market hundreds of thousands of miles away. After we find out what is on the market we supplement the product selection to provide the variety of fruits and vegetables that we have all grown accus-

introduction to the first edition

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tomed to. With experience, we get to know and trust the farmers and suppliers. We also feel that food grown close to home is produced under conditions and standards over which we have some measure of control. Fair labour laws, reduced pesticide use and environmental standards are important to us. The Ontario government has a plan to reduce pesticide use by half by the year 2000 and encourages farmers to file environmental farm plans. The rhythms of the Good Food Box have established themselves over the years. Orders and payments are taken, collated, produce is ordered, food received, packed and delivered. The Good Food Box is paid for in advance and delivered to a neighbourhood drop-off point, which is run by a volunteer drop-off coordinator. Volunteers also help to pack the boxes. In all these ways the Good Food Box breaks down barriers to getting affordable, nutritious food. It’s a simple idea that a community can take and adapt to its own reality. Good Food Box programs have started in many cities and towns in Ontario by people who are interested in food security issues. In October 1997, groups running Good Food Box programs across the province got together to discuss our similarities and differences. We compared customer numbers, types of boxes, buying sources, newsletters and volunteer supports. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to meet. Our solution-oriented approaches to the problems of food insecurity are complex and integrated. Many are experimenting with growing food, providing job readiness skills to volunteers and even setting up small community supported businesses like Niagara’s Gift Baskets and FoodShare’s Field to Table Catering Company. Our common ground involves the connection between growing food and eating it, the relationship between family and the community and the interplay of health, nutrition and money. Our bottom line is that we believe that food is a cause for joy and celebration. Mary Lou Morgan Founder of the Good Food Box

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The Good Food Box

Introduction to the second edition July 21, 2008

M

uch is the same, yet some things are different than they were in 1997 when FoodShare published the first edition of The Good Food Box Guide.

But things have changed as well. First and foremost, the food crisis has escalated in ways that even the most pessimistic food critics could not have predicted. Who in 1997 could have foreseen food riots in 2008, caused by soaring food prices? World hunger aggravated by growing poverty has resulted in increased food insecurity instead of the promised “end of hunger.” Meanwhile tens of thousands of Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past decade1 and the Farm Line2 hotline was set up to support Ontario farmers in dealing with financial and emotional difficulties, including the escalating rate of farm bankruptcies. We are also witnessing a pandemic of obesity3 and diabetes, partly fueled by a corporate fast food system that cares more about profit than health. Rising gas prices, biofuel mania, global climate change, drought, trade imbalances and continued war have created a staggering global food crisis: • 1.1 billion people go to sleep hungry every night; • For the first time in human history, the same number of people, 1.1. billion, go to sleep over-nourished from too much of the least healthy foods4; • Agriculture is increasingly economically and environmentally unsustainable. At the same time, interest in healthy and local food has grown exponentially over the past decade. Everyone is talking about food and the need to change the food system. Many of the practical lifestyle solutions, grassroots programs and policy proposals promoted by FoodShare a decade ago, are now accepted as main stream solutions. Canada’s food guide has changed; a healthy diet is now based on a more servings of

Introduction to the second edition

In Toronto, the realities that led to the development of the Good Food Box still exist. Poor access to affordable, healthy food for low-income communities, limited market access for local farmers and promotion of pre-packaged, convenience foods by the dominant players in our food system, all remain profound problems.

1 Food First: A Bitter Harvest: Farmer Suicide in India, Development Report, 2007 (https://www.foodfirst.org/en/ node/1611) 2 Farm Line: When You Need Someone to Talk To, 2008 (http://www.thefarmline.ca/whoweare.html) 3Health Experts: Obesity Pandemic Loom, 2006 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14657885/) 4 Gary Gardner and Brian Halwell: Overfed and Underfed, World Watch Paper, 2000 (http://www.wellfedworld.org/PDF/ Overfed%20and%20Underfed.pdf)

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vegetables and fruits a day. Local, organic and fair trade have all become more acceptable and a new generation of young people and immigrants are interested in farming and producing food for the local market. This heightened interest in food, though positive in terms of the growing interest in the Good Food Box and FoodShare’s work, has exacerbated the inherent complexities within the program. Is it always a win-win situation between the needs of low-income consumers and local farmers? How can the Good Food Box buy as much local as possible even if it costs a bit more, when so many Good Food Box customers have lost buying power over the past decade? How do we balance various environmental agendas? Should we select imported organic produce from southern California or conventionally grown Ontario produce? What about the tastes and traditions of new Canadian customers born in the tropics who care deeply about imported produce like mangoes in the winter? Where does organic, still close to double the price of conventional produce, fit into a program designed to improve low-income individuals’ access to healthy food? These changes over the past decade – increased global food problems and interest amongst broad layers of society in a new food system – make it more urgent than ever for government involvement. What if governments all around the world agreed to put “food first” rather than last in social policy? What if they subsidized basic food items such as vegetables and fruits, rice, grains and beans, sold throughout the country? These kinds of subsidies were successful in ensuring better food access for the poor in India’s Kerala state5 before the World Bank pressured the government to stop them. Subsidized open-air Sacalao markets in Belo Horizante, Brazil6 are one of several programs that the local government supports to improve food security. What if healthy foods were cheaper, in all grocery stores, than packaged foods, reducing the rates of obesity, diabetes and a variety of illnesses caused by eating unhealthy foods? What if farmers who produced for the local market were guaranteed stable and adequate prices while low-income consumers were guaranteed affordable prices and the government made up the difference? In the meantime, what if Good Food Box programs, which model these solutions in a community-based setting, were funded by governments at all levels? What if everyone, in every part of Canada, was able to access the Good Food Box? We are confident their health would improve as they increased their consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Market share for local farmers would improve, since the Good 5 Poykayil Simon George, International Food Policy Research Institute: Costs and Benefits of Food Subsidies in India, 1988 (http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/books/ppa88/ppa88ch16.pdf) 6 Cecilia Rocha: An Integrated Program for Urban Food Security: The Case of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2000 (http://www.envireform.utoronto.ca/conference/local-food/cecilia-rocha.doc) and The City that is Ending Hunger, 2006 (http://www.yesmagazine. org/article.asp?ID=1398)

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Food Box prioritizes local buying. There could be environmental benefits too, by working with farmers to reduce packaging and transportation and to promote sustainable growing practices. Since the Good Food Box does not deliver directly to individuals but only to groups of ten or more, there are also social benefits in terms of building community cohesion. Government funding would reduce tensions between the needs of low-income consumers and farmers, by providing funds to ensure that farmers get a fair price, while still keeping the Good Food Box price affordable enough for low-income consumers. The benefits of the Good Food Box have only increased in the fourteen years since it began. Although it is a small community based program, the Good Food Box is built on the principle that everyone deserves subsidized, healthy food and has great potential to influence policy solutions for a myriad of food security issues. In order to share our experience, we were delighted when the Heifer Foundations supported us in republishing the Good Food Box Guide, one of the eight manuals we have published to share what we have learned about how to organize successful grassroots food programs. The Heifer Foundation’s concept of “passing on the gift” is central to the practice of non-profit organizations so that others don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It is not a cookie cutter model, as each community’s situation is different and therefore each program across the country varies, sustained by the their own organizational and financial realities, but we hope this manual will serve as a resource for inspiration and learning. A few years ago I participated in a panel at the Food Security Conference in Alberta, with a Registered Dietician from Community Food Connections in Medicine Hat, Alberta. She held up three manuals – FoodShare’s Good Food Box Guide, The ABC’s of Baby Food: Making Baby Food from Scratch and How Does Our Garden Grow: A Guide to Community Gardening Success. We had never met before, but she had found our manuals helpful in the creation of their Good Food Box, baby nutrition and gardening programs. Though we can pass on the logistics of how we organize packing day, it is harder to pass on our sustainability model. People always ask about how they can finance the program. Across the country we all struggle with the economics of operating food programs since there is no federal and very little provincial or local funding. We wish we could “pass on the gift” of a model of financial sustainability. In our case, living in a large city, we can access private donors, foundations and grants from the City of Toronto for the Good Food Box program.

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In the United States, the Department of Agriculture funds community-based food programs like the Good Food Box. When we started the Good Food Box we received a few years of Provincial funding through a partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministries of Education, Community Services and Housing. Agriculture and Health are Federal and Provincial issues and it is important that they are involved. To grow the Good Food Box we need increased funding. The more boxes we distribute, the more funds needed. Those starting a program will need to find sources of sustainable funding. In the long run, we hope government funding will be there to help. In the short term, we encourage groups to seek funding from everyone – faith-based organizations, individuals, the private sector, family foundations and the government – when possible. We hope this second edition of the manual will help to increase interest in starting Good Food Box programs and that readers find it useful. Please stay in touch with us as we work toward government support for food programs and as we build a more sustainable, equitable and just food system. Debbie Field Executive Director

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The Good Food Box

Understanding the Good Food Box:

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Is this the right program for your community? The History of FoodShare’s Good Food Box Program

In the late 1980’s, FoodShare staff began to share the frustration of many that the problem of hunger was not diminishing. Income inequality and unemployment were, if anything, increasing. Food banks – originally intended as a stopgap solution – appeared to be here to stay. We heard from food bank users that the food they received was often limited in quantity and quality, and rarely included fresh produce. A strong tradition against resorting to charity means that many feel ashamed when they are forced to use a food bank – sometimes to the point of going hungry rather than doing so. Food bank organizers have stated that food banks are not a sustainable response to hunger and that they want to “put themselves out of business.” So FoodShare began to explore self-help models like cooperative buying systems, collective kitchens and community gardens that would have the potential to address short-term issues of household hunger, while also providing longer-term benefits by building the capacity of individuals and communities. The Good Food Box program was created as a cooperative buying system with a focus on local and seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables. In January of 1994, we packed forty Good Food Boxes in the basement of our office on Queen Street West. Now, in 2008, we pack and distribute just under 4,000 boxes per month in a 7,000 square foot warehouse with a walk-in cooler and forklift. We have also grown to have almost 180 active neighborhood-based drop-offs.

Understanding the Good Food Box

FoodShare was founded in 1985 by then Mayor of Toronto, Art Eggleton, and others concerned about the growth of hunger in our city and the many food banks that had taken place in the wake of the recession of the early 1980’s. FoodShare’s original mandate was to coordinate emergency food services and to collect and distribute food. We were also responsible for the Hunger Hotline, which was established as a volunteer-run referral program for people seeking food services in their neighborhood. Another key part of FoodShare’s mandate was to advocate for policies that would ensure adequate employment and the income necessary to enable all people to meet their basic needs.

We have seen the number of weekly orders rise over the years. As a result, we are now able to get better prices on produce due to increased purchasing power and can pass these savings onto our customers. We have also been able to increase the number

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of farmers from whom we purchase directly, especially for our organic boxes. The larger our orders are, the more feasible it is for farmers to work with us.

The Philosophy Behind the Good Food Box

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

We believe that everyone deserves affordable, healthy and sustainably produced food. Communities should not be dependent on handouts of food, nor should handouts be necessary. In the long run, government needs to make food a right and subsidize basic foods for the entire population. In the meantime, cooperative models of food distribution, like the Good Food Box, are created to improve access and affordability of fresh produce and to help strengthen local farm economies. Over the years, we have broadened our focus to look at the entire food system – how food is produced, distributed and consumed. We see hunger as just one symptom of a food system that is geared to treating food primarily as a commodity. FoodShare believes that access to food is a basic human right because, like air or water, it is fundamental to our health and survival. But the question is how to make this right a reality. Should food be subjected to the same rules of market distribution that govern, say, soap or toothpaste? Or should governments help to ensure that basic foods are available to everyone in the same way that the health care system in Canada provides subsidized health care to all Canadians? We believe there is a role for not-for-profit food distribution mechanisms, of which the Good Food Box is one example, in helping to ensure that all people have the basic human right to access food. We believe that the government should support programs like the Good Food Box to make this right a reality. What we’ve come to realize is that the “what” and “how” of food access is also important and that it’s not just any food that we’re talking about. We try to promote an awareness that fresh, whole foods are key to health, well-being and disease prevention, and to illustrate this principle through all our programs. How people get their food is also important. Food distribution systems that involve communities and help to create neighborhood leaders have a great potential to enhance individual and community empowerment, by leading people to feel that they have control over this very basic part of their lives. All our programs are based on this community building principle. Again, because of its material, cultural and social importance, food is special in its power to mobilize people to action. The Good Food Box – while subsidized by FoodShare through individual donations, foundation and government grants – aims to give its customers a

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The Good Food Box

stake in the food distribution process. It is not a for-profit enterprise, nor is it based on charity. It is a bulk-buying club that uses public subsidy to try and create a positive situation for consumers in the city and for farmers, by allowing farmers to earn better prices for their crops, while allowing consumers in the city to pay wholesale prices. Like all of FoodShare’s programs, it does not distinguish between rich or poor, because we believe that everyone needs to eat healthier foods and increase their consumption of vegetables and fruit. We have learned from years of work in low-income communities, that people living on a low-income don’t like participating in means-tested programs. It is obvious that the Good Food Box program cannot solve the problems of food insecurity alone. However, we see the Good Food Box as a good start. At the very least, the box can improve people’s access to healthy food, support farmers, bring people together and strengthen communities. We hope it can be a conversation starter about the kind of system we want to build in which everyone has access to healthy, affordable, local and sustainably produced food.

“A person who has health has hope, and one who has hope has everything." Anonymous

Good Food Box Guiding Principles Start with the food!

Food included in the Good Food Box is of the highest quality. It is geared towards being personally and culturally acceptable to the widest group of people possible, and is selected and arranged in order to appeal to all of the senses. Aesthetics matter. Handle the food carefully. Choose produce for colour and variety and thoughtfully arrange the produce for maximum appeal. A beautiful box reflects the fact that the Good Food Box is not a handout but a high quality product.

Improve the affordability of healthy food

Customers pay for a portion of what it costs to produce the Good Food Box, FoodShare and it’s various funding sources make up for the rest. Customers benefit from the cost savings of bulk buying and the time saved from this distribution method. This means purchasing high quality, fresh food is within the reach of many more people than through the regular retail system.

Make the Good Food Box fun

A large part of the Toronto Good Food Box’s success arises from the sheer fun that people have receiving the box. Opening the box is a surprise each time, “What’s in it this time?” Customers have even reported that their children are more interested in and willing to eat the Good Food Box food because of the novel method by which it arrives.

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Support local and organic agriculture

We believe that to create a sustainable and affordable food system we need to invest in our local farmers and support sustainable farming practices. A healthy farm economy helps to boost urban economy and helps to ensure we have access to affordable local produce. In order to support one another, city dwellers and farming communities need to work towards a shared vision for food access. The Good Food Box creates an opportunity for customers to learn more about their local farmers and influence the variety of produce and how it is grown.

Make participation easy for everyone

Be aware of, and make the box meet the needs of low-income people and people on social assistance. For example, in Toronto communities, that means requesting payment in advance and delivering toward the end of the month, when money and supplies are running low. Families with little money for food take a risk when paying in advance to purchase a Good Food Box, so quality is of utmost importance. If the box arrives full of wilted vegetables, this can have a severe impact on a family’s food for a week and can dissuade a family from future participation. Damaged food may also call up associations of “seconds,” furthering stigmatization and reducing the chance of positive word of mouth advertising – an important component for success. Most importantly promoting increased fresh fruit and vegetable consumption is a worthy goal for people of all income levels, and the participation of diverse people in this program is a major component of its success.

Balance revenue & subsidy to achieve financial sustainability

Ideally a Good Food Box program will both improve access to fresh produce and generate the revenue necessary to cover all costs. This is rarely possible due to the financial limitations of low-income communities, the cost of supporting volunteers and local farmers and the cost of creating educational materials. A combination of subsidy and revenue are likely necessary.

A Week in the Life of FoodShare’s Good Food Box Team Here is a description of a typical week here at our FoodShare warehouse. The sun rises on a snowy and cold Wednesday morning. The Good Food Box team arrives, they exchange comments on the weather, fill the coffee maker with fresh grounds and prepare for the beginning of the Good Food Box cycle. The fax machine chimes with orders, inboxes are filled, and the telephone rings with customers calling from living rooms and offices. The database quickly fills with orders, while the team meets to plan the contents for each of our seven different boxes.

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The Good Food Box

Thursday a few more late orders arrive, along with apologies. The final number of boxes is printed and the warehouse begins to stir. Our green plastic Good Food Boxes are counted, labeled and arranged in preparation as a group of volunteers from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health arrives to wash our used boxes. The equipment is polished, greased, and the packing supplies are fully stocked. The produce buyer calls farmers and starts to accumulate information on what is available, what is in season, and what is of excellent value. The empty spaces in the newsletter fill up with recipes, farmer profiles, and articles on eating healthily, and food security. On Friday, the produce buyer calls farmers and places the orders. The newsletter is finished and printed out. On Monday, at a very early hour, one of our drivers picks up our produce from the Ontario Food Terminal and brings this produce back to our warehouse. The farmers arrive all at once, with overloaded pick-ups and large trucks. The empty warehouse fills with the color and aroma of a farmer’s field. A moment later the warehouse is mostly empty, the cooler now full. The prices, quality, size, and origin of the produce is recorded and used to make any last minute adjustments to the contents of the boxes. Tuesday morning the staff starts early in order to arrange produce into packing assembly lines and set up pre-packaging stations for loose produce that is to be bagged. The volunteers arrive between 9 and 9:30 a.m. The volunteer coordinator signs in volunteers, gives them name-tags and helps orient new ones. The warehouse assistant keeps all produce well stocked and manages the supply and flow of produce throughout the day. Volunteers are set up in the packing assembly lines and are shown in detail how to pack the boxes to prevent the produce from getting damaged and to make the boxes look presentable. A driver arrives at noon to start delivering boxes to community drop-off locations and picks up the previous week’s empty boxes. Packing continues until all boxes are packed, usually about 3 p.m, with a half-hour break for lunch at 12:30 p.m. Volunteers are given a large box of produce to take home as our token of appreciation. The volunteer drop-off coordinators receive the delivery of boxes from the drivers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which are then picked up by members of his/ her community. The coordinator is responsible for collecting payments from customers, placing their collective order and making sure they pick up their boxes. The drivers return from their route between 3-7 p.m. and unload the empty Good Food Boxes destined to be washed and repacked for next week. While the boxes are being delivered our office staff also answers calls from customers and drivers if any issues arise.

understanding the good food box

21

Here is a chart summarizing our work rhythms for the week.

Weekly Work Rhythms Chart

(Based on a Good Food Box schedule of one delivery per week)

Monday

• Staff meeting • Receive produce • Produce is checked for quality and size to make sure there is enough for each uniform box • Preparation of packing signs, printing of newsletters and content sheets

Tuesday

• Prepare the packing assembly lines and pre-packaging stations • Greet volunteers • Pack boxes until finished • Drivers deliver boxes to coordinators • Clean up • Create truck routes for the week

Wednesday

• Drivers deliver boxes to coordinators • All orders must be in by 12 noon for the next week • Feature vegetable selected based on what is in season and local

Thursday

• Start calling farmers to see what is available for what price • Plan and write newsletter • Take inventory and restocking of packaging materials

Friday

• Create box contents • Order produce

Our Customers: Who Are They and Why Do They Purchase a Box? Our experience leads us to believe that a typical Good Food Box customer is a middle aged female, who takes on the responsibility for providing food for herself and a spouse or family. They live in Toronto and their family earnings fall below or are at the median income. They are motivated to eat healthier and provide healthy food for their families, are knowledgeable about the benefits of supporting local agriculture and demand a box that contains local and/or organic produce. They also come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and are interested in items they can use in their home-cooking. They are interested in the Good Food Box because it offers value, is convenient, and gives them a feeling they are supporting a shared vision for food access. In November 2007, a survey was distributed to Good Food Box customers over a two-week period. Its purpose was both to inform the content of the Good Food Box Manual and to help FoodShare better understand the demographics and opinions of

22

The Good Food Box

Good Food Box customers. 354 Good Food Box households returned the survey, or 24% of those surveyed. Here are several of the questions and responses that you may find interesting.

What are your main reasons for purchasing a Good Food Box? Responses

Percent

Support local farmers

Reason

304

86%

Low cost

226

64%

Helping me eat better

211

60%

Freshness

209

59%

Convenience

194

55%

Quality

187

53%

Supporting organic farmers

153

43%

Connection to my community

134

38%

Other

50

14%

Total

1,668

This reveals that the top three reasons customers purchase the Good Food Box are also FoodShare’s top three program goals: to support local farmers, make food more affordable and promote healthy eating habits. Among the reasons cited, there was also a high appreciation of the box’s contents; over 50% of those who responded noted that quality, freshness and convenience were reasons for buying the box. Reasons in the “Other” category included: wanting to financially support FoodShare, wanting to reduce packaging, the surprise and variety of the box, being forced to cook more and supporting non-GMO (genetically modified organism) products.

What is your favorite thing about the Good Food Box?

• It is local and organic (comment from customers of the Organic Good Food Box). • The cost is low. • It keeps me healthy by forcing me to eat more vegetables or cook more. • It teaches my children about nutrition. • It’s convenient and saves time. • It’s delivered to my house (in the case of some coordinators and Meals on Wheels participants). • The newsletter and the recipes, especially, are excellent.

understanding the good food box

23

• The volunteer drop-off coordinator is great and picking up the box provides a chance to visit (one respondent said that their coordinator organized weekly potlucks for Good Food Box customers). • The quality of the produce is high (some said higher than most stores). • It supports FoodShare. • It makes me feel connected to my community. • It’s an exciting surprise each time. Many said it’s “like Christmas.” • The variety of the box. • It forces me to try new things.

Good Food Markets, Another Produce Distribution Choice Good Food Markets share the same philosophy and principals as the Good Food Box program. The main difference is that instead of distributing the produce in boxes, the produce is sold to community organizations to sell to their neighborhoods in the form of a market. Many communities are interested in having markets but making linkages with farmers who would find it financially viable to invest in the start-up of small markets is very challenging. For this reason the Good Food Markets have the ability to fill this need. Over time patronage and popularity will increase, thus creating a potential site for a farmers’ market. If you are interested in learning more about Good Food Markets please inquire about FoodShare’s Good Food Market manual. Our research has shown that a Good Food Market customer spends on average $7-10 each time they shop at the Good Food Market. Since the Good Food Box costs between $12-32 per box, it may be that the Good Food Markets are a better vehicle than the Good Food Box for reaching lower income community members. Good Food Markets are often managed and further subsidized by community partners who also choose the produce that best suits their neighbourhood’s needs.

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The Good Food Box

2

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

In the beginning stages of FoodShare’s Good Food Box program, an advisory committee was put together with representatives from different sectors such as churches, farms and private businesses. A real learning process took place as each sector shared their perspective. The farmers came to an understanding that the problem being addressed by the program was not simply about food distribution but also about hunger and its complex causes like the lack of income, lack of access to stores, and cultural and individual attitudes about food. At the same time, the rest of the committee learned about agricultural issues: how weather affects crops, how systems and different levels of distribution work and how food is graded. As the group worked together, it realized that it had to modify its goals. Initially, the primary purpose was to set up a more direct buying relationship between the urban poor and farmers – to shorten the distance between field and table. There was also the hope that seconds and other blemished produce that farmers could not sell in the market place could be distributed at reduced costs to low-income communities. As it turned out, the early orders were on too small a scale to make it worth while for farmers to participate. As well, focus groups with low-income community members revealed that people were not interested in produce that did not look as good as what was available in stores. Therefore, our approach shifted to purchasing vegetables and fruits that people wanted to buy through the Ontario Food Terminal with the future hope of supporting local farmers once the Good Food Box program grew. As we expanded, we were able to make more direct relationships with farmers. In 2006, with just under 4,000 boxes per month, 54% of the produce FoodShare purchased was local, and 20% was purchased directly from farmers. As the Good Food Box became more established and structured, the need for an active Advisory Committee decreased and FoodShare’s staff and Board of Directors took on this function. However, we would suggest from our experience that it is very important that you establish an Advisory Committee when you start the Good Food Box. The Committee could include representatives of low-income families, farmers, agency supporters, faith-based organizations, local politicians, business leaders and others who might support the development of the Good Food Box in your community.

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

Choosing Goals for Your Program

It is important to decide what the goals of your program will be before you begin. FoodShare has been able to deepen its goals because of the large number of boxes we pack (purchasing directly from farmers has become more feasible) and the increased

starting your own good food box program

25

number of different boxes we offer (such as organic, pre-cut and portioned produce and fruit boxes, which better serve a diverse clientele). We started with a focus on healthy, affordable food that would be used by the widest range of cultural groups. We have since broadened our goals to include purchasing produce from local farmers, supporting sustainable farming practices and increasing convenient prepared produce for aging, ailing or busy individuals. We would also eventually like to work with local farmers to grow culturally specific crops, like okra and calaloo, in order create boxes that would appeal to various cultural groups. Below is a list of goals you may want to consider when planning your Good Food Box program.

Making fresh food affordable, especially for low-income communities

To offer competitively priced produce, you will likely need to source produce through high-volume, consolidated supply-chains, which offer lower prices on produce. To meet the needs of your consumers, you may also want to offer types of produce that are used by most customers on a regular basis, even if they are not seasonal. Note that produce purchased directly from farmers can, in some cases, be less expensive than through a consolidated supply chain and we at FoodShare are always looking at these direct options when possible.

Promoting healthy food

We offer a box of quality fruits and vegetables that improves overall health by encouraging the consumption of more servings of fresh vegetables and fruits each day. A health focus can be enhanced if you provide nutritional information and recipes with your boxes. You may also want to include produce with a low glycemic index or provide organic produce known to have less chemical residues.

Supporting local farmers

We do our best to prioritize local produce, putting it in the box whenever it is feasible. Even in the winter, stored local items such as carrots, onions and apples are available. Since the variety of produce during the winter months is very limited and the local supply of Ontario fruits, even in the summer months, is limited, FoodShare has never produced a “Local Only Box.” However, because the demand for local produce has increased, we are discussing the idea of a local box as one of the options for customers. Keep in mind that finding farmers willing to supply you with produce depends on how economical it is for them to transport it to you. The larger the box program the larger your orders and the greater the likelihood that local farmers will find it financially sustainable to deliver to you.

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The Good Food Box

Supporting organic agriculture

Improving access to organic produce and supporting farmers who grow organically is important for maintaining soil fertility and decreasing our exposure to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Organic produce, however, can be prohibitively expensive for low-income communities and therefore you may not be able to achieve your goal of improving the affordability of produce if you choose to source organic. FoodShare has opted to create a separate organic box, which has different aims than our regular Good Food Box. There are, however, times when organic produce is available at a comparable price to that which is conventionally grown. In these situations we would choose the organic product over the conventional one.

Offering culturally specific fruits and vegetables

You may want to target certain cultural groups by creating boxes that contain culturally specific fruits and vegetables, especially if these groups have barriers to accessing this type of fresh produce. Working with farms to grow culturally specific fruits and vegetables, with the assistance of someone with growing knowledge of these crops, can improve access to culturally appropriate produce and provide employment and community development opportunities.

Increase convenience of eating healthily

Pre-cut produce, in portions that are measured based on the Canadian Food Guide requirements, can help make it easier for seniors or people recovering from chronic illnesses to eat more servings of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Identifying Your Target Group and Making the Program Suit Their Needs Although a Good Food Box program is based on universal access to food, the reality is that you will also be serving the needs of very specific groups (i.e. low-income families, farmers, or busy individuals who want to eat healthier). A successful program not only requires knowledge of your target group but an understanding of what would appeal to them. Here are of some suggestions to help you shape your program to meet the needs of your customers: • Understand why individuals in your desired group will use the program and be effective at promoting these benefits (i.e. mothers interested in feeding their families healthy food, individuals with a keen interest in eating healthily). At FoodShare, we know that a large number of our customers are low-income, single mothers. This means we often include information on child nutrition and recipes for kidfriendly foods.

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

Barriers to accessing Good, Healthy Food • Insufficient income • Affordable grocery retailers are inaccessible by affordable transportation • No access to a kitchen to prepare food • Insufficient time to prepare food • Insufficient skills to prepare food • Food labels are hard to understand and are missing information necessary to make good food choices • Insufficient knowledge of nutrition, agriculture, etc, to make good food choices

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• Understanding the existing barriers your target group face (i.e. if many individuals living on a low-income feel that they lose their dignity by using programs specifically geared towards low-income communities, you may want to consider a program that is accessible to everyone). • Partnering with community or private agencies who have access to and knowledge of the target group you wish to serve (i.e. churches, community centers, health food stores, health centers) is extremely helpful. These agencies can offer resources, advice and support, to help you reach out to new customers. Building a partnership with a local agency to further subsidize the cost of the box can help make the boxes more accessible to those living on very low incomes. • Adding other related programming at pick-up locations, like soup and meal programs, nutrition classes or wider health education campaigns, can increase the appeal of participating in the Good Food Box. If your program has the resources you can also consider running these programs yourself.

The Fresh Produce Distribution Industry The Good Food Box is an alternative way of distributing fresh produce. Understanding the current trends that are affecting this industry will help you design a program that achieves your objectives while being competitive in the marketplace. Below are some current trends in the fresh produce distribution industry.

Consolidation of suppliers and distributors

In order to lower the cost of produce and maintain a competitive advantage over other grocery retailers, many grocery stores are reducing their number of suppliers. The suppliers that they choose must be able to supply a larger amount of produce, which results in a cheaper price per unit. Large suppliers in regions with longer growing seasons are attractive for grocers and reduce the amount of staffing the grocery store must allocate to purchasing since there are less accounts to take care of. The drawback is that Canadian farmers with smaller operations have difficulty getting their products on grocery store shelves. This type of consolidation has resulted in a monopolized food system, with few owners who each have a great deal of control over what is sold and produced. The current situation is unfair to local farmers and is one of the reasons that new cooperative mechanisms like the Good Food Box are so important to farmers so that they have alternative venues to sell their produce outside the current distribution system.

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The Good Food Box

Convenience

Canadians have less time, fewer domestic skills and less of an inclination to devote time to food related chores than previous generations. As a result there is an increased demand for foods that can be prepared in a short period of time. This is not a new consumer trend, however, it has evolved over time. When convenience foods were first introduced, consumers were willing to accept a lower quality and poorer taste for the ability to prepare a meal in a short period of time. But today, consumers requirements for convenience foods are more sophisticated than the speed of preparation. Today, convenience foods must also be easy to purchase and clean up, nutritious, flavorful and of good value.

Direct marketing of local produce

The direct marketing of produce, a food system where fresh produce is directly distributed from producer to consumer, can be achieved through initiatives such as U-picks, food box programs and community shared agriculture projects. The good news is that these types of initiatives are increasing in number in North America. An increase in the number and popularity of farmers’ markets in Canada is evidence of this trend.

Sustainable agriculture

Farming practices that protect natural resources and support the agricultural community have become increasingly important to producers and consumers in recent years, as concern for the environment and safeguarding our food supply rises.

Competitive Analysis FoodShare mainly competes against a produce distribution system that relies on large scale consolidated supply chains that offer low prices. The produce from these supply chains often ends up in large super markets, which are most often accessed by car or public transit. A number of the Good Food Box drop-off locations are in low-income neighbourhoods, far away from any grocery stores. In some cases, a convenience store is the closest food outlet to a social housing complex where people live. The Good Food Box program tries not to compete with farmers’ markets, farmer food box programs or private sector organic home delivery companies that provide special box programs to individual consumers.

What advantages does the Good Food Box have over a large supermarket chain? The Good Food Box offers: • fresh and healthy food • an overall lower cost of produce (see Table 1 below)

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

29

• • • • • •

a large percentage of local produce, sometimes directly from farmers only high quality produce the convenience of delivery close to home a community activity that can decrease social isolation a program that customers can feel good about supporting newsletters and other useful resources

Table 1. Comparison of the Large Good Food Box (cost: $17) to three grocery stores. This study was completed in August of 2007. * Locally produced Large Good Food Box item

Grocery store #1

Source/ quality

Grocery store #2

Source /quality

Grocery store #3

Source/ quality

6 Corn*

$1.49

ON/ good

$ 1.20

ON/ good

$1.08

ON/ good ON/ good

$1.29 $ 1.71

ON/ good ON/ good

$1.29 $1.00

ON/ very poor ON/ good ON/ good

1 Bag Carrots* 4 lbs Potatoes*

$1.99 $1.99

1 Bag Barlett Pears* 1 Bag Apples*

$3.99

ON/ good

$ 4.99

ON/ good

$3.99

ON/ good

$3.99

ON/ good

$3.49

ON/ good

$1.99

1 Cantaloupe

$2.49

$1.49

$1.99 $0.99

$1.99 $0.99

not local/ good ON/ good ON/ good

$1.49

1 Pint Mushrooms* 1 lb Plum Tomatoes* 1 English Cucumber* 2 lbs Onion* 1 Bunch Broccoli* 1 Romaine Lettuce* 1 Bunch Bananas

Not local/ good ON/ good ON/ good

$1.49 $0.79

Not local/ good not local/ poor ON/ good ON/ good

$1.49

ON/ good

$1.29

ON/ good

$0.99

ON/ good

$2.49 $1.29 $0.99

ON/ good ON/ good ON/ good

$1.49 $1.29 $0.99

ON/ good ON/ good ON/ good

$1.29 $1.29 $0.69

ON/ good ON/ poor ON/ poor

$1.18

Not local/ good

$1.18

not local/ good

$0.99

Not local/ poor

Total Savings/box Savings/year (based on 2 boxes per month)

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$26.36 $9.36

$23.39 $6.39

$18.37 $1.37

$224.64

$153.36

$ 32.88

The Good Food Box

What disadvantages are there to the Good Food Box compared to a large supermarket chain? • The Good Food Box doesn’t allow the consumer to select the fruits and vegetables they want to buy. The Good Food Box team decides on the contents of the box based on our goals, the best prices in any given week and our knowledge of our customers’ preferences. • The Good Food Box price can still be too expensive for some community members. Families with a low income may not be able to invest $17 for a Good Food Box and may only have $5-10 of expendable income on hand at any time. These individuals would benefit from a Good Food Market more than a Good Food Box or from a program that is supported by a local organization that can add another level of subsidy. For example customers could pay $10 and a local church could make up for the $7 difference. • Due to the delivery system, the produce can lose some freshness in transit and may cause a consumer, purchasing the box for freshness and quality, to return to another food retailer. • The Good Food Box only offers fresh produce, therefore a consumer will still need to make the trip to the grocery store for packaged items, the protein of their choice, such as meat, cheese, fish, beans or tofu and other items to fill out their dietary requirements.

Marketing Plan – The 5 P’s Product

The box should sell itself. Price and quality are the two biggest selling points of the box, and it is impossible to prioritize one over the other because they are so closely intertwined. A top quality box avoids arousing any negative feelings that low-income customers may have about receiving second-rate goods. Thus the box itself is its own best advertisement. Aside from the actual quality and value of the box, presentation is key to producing a perception of value. This means that the box must be packed carefully, with the heaviest items on the bottom to avoid damage (and subsequent spoilage), and that contents must be arranged attractively. Have an array of colours visible, place vegetables like broccoli face up and ensure that the box itself is well cleaned. This will lead to positive word-of-mouth advertising, which is the best kind.

Price

Produce sales are our largest source of income for the Toronto Good Food Box – over $500,000 per year. Of this amount, a portion is the margin. It is calculated using a percentage formula in order to determine the percentage of profit. Margin = (Selling price – Cost price) / Selling price x 100

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

31

If you’re a for-profit business and enough sales are made, the margin should cover all expenses and include a profit for the company. Generally the higher the margin, the less goods that have to be sold. Since produce is inexpensive, a huge volume of sales must be made to break even. At the retail level, a margin of 33-100% is applied to produce, depending on what the market will bear. There are many players and steps involved in the produce supply chain and each step requires financial input. A farmer grows and harvests potatoes by the ton and receives approximately 6.5 cents per pound. The packing house washes and puts the potatoes in a 10-pound bag and adds another 15 cents and sells it to a wholesale company. The wholesaler then sells the bag for $1.15 to the supermarket, who in turn markets that same bag of potatoes for $1.99 to $2.99. Each sector takes their margin. The food system in Canada is very efficient and power is heavily concentrated at the retail level where the largest amount of money is made. The Good Food Box and other FoodShare entrepreneurial programs compete in this setting. FoodShare aims for a 25% or greater margin, depending on the box. The margin covers the cost of delivery, a portion of the operating cost and produce. Grants and donations cover all infrastructure costs such as rent and equipment, including salaries. In 2008, a $17 Good Food Box contained $12.24 worth of produce at wholesale prices. This includes the produce buyer’s fee. Another 10 cents is assigned to cover the cost of replacing the recyclable boxes and 10 cents for the newsletter. The remaining funds cover the cost of delivery. It is important to cover as much of our expenses as possible, yet still have good prices to attract a low-income customer. The Good Food Box costs $17 but has a value of anywhere from $18 to $30 in a retail store. The customer saves money, has the box delivered close to home and has banked money by paying in advance. In addition, the food is of excellent quality. The savings are a significant incentive for people to continue buying from the program. One of the central challenges is to keep prices low enough that you can sell the box to people who have little money. It must be a good enough deal – good enough to persuade them to spend scarce money on fresh fruits and vegetables when there are so many other competing needs. In a strictly business situation all costs including salaries are covered by the selling price. In our case, the margin that a low-income customer can afford to pay cannot cover all the costs involved and so, the Good Food Box program, despite its efficiency, requires external funding. Growth in customer numbers will result in a bulk buying advantage and an economy of scale, but there is a plateau beyond which it is very difficult to reduce costs. The scale and complexity of a Good Food Box program in a large urban city like Toronto requires both a reasonable margin and subsidies in order to keep growing. While volunteers are a central part of the project, they can only be responsible for so

32

The Good Food Box

much. For example, to use volunteers to make deliveries could result in back injuries or legal complications over the long term. Realistically, the coordination of such a large fleet of volunteers would itself demand a full time position.

Placement/Delivery area

Depending on your transportation and human resources you may need to restrict the area where you can deliver the Good Food Boxes. Targeting institutions with higher traffic, storage capabilities and flexible delivery times will help to maximize the number of boxes and make it easier for delivery. If you are motivated to make healthy fresh produce available and accessible to those of low-income, determine the areas in your city or town that have a greater need for this program. We decided to focus on the Greater Toronto Area.

Promotion • Flyers Materials that specifically target low-income people often scream “poverty,” because non-profit organizations often lack the resources to produce promotional materials. Early research for the Good Food Box showed that when people saw a rough, hand-drawn, photocopied flyer, they assumed that the quality of the produce would be inferior. This can present a problem if Good Food Box supporters decide that they want to help promote the program in their own building and draw up their own materials. It is a good idea to provide people with the necessary promotional materials, so that the image of the program is consistent and is associated with quality. As in corporate advertising, it is generally a good idea to try to keep a consistent look in your advertising in order to build a “product image.” If you have to change your logo or pamphlet, try to keep as many design elements as possible the same. • Signature boxes Re-usable plastic boxes can be printed with the Good Food Box logo and can act as advertising. • Media Pursuing the local media is an excellent way to gain publicity. The Good Food Box has had some excellent coverage by receptive journalists; for example, local television shows such as CBC’s Marketplace and on TV Ontario have provided a public stage to promote the program. This type of advertising is free and has proven effective.

Why it’s important to brand your Good Food Box: Good Food Boxes with your group’s logo can: • Distinguish your program from others. • Be an advertisement for quality. • Protect your customers and your group. • Be used in displays and to advertise your program. • Be used to market new products.

However, journalists may not always be capable of seeing or portraying more subtle messages, and they may be more inclined to portray the pathos of poverty than community development or empowering messages. A negative mes-

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

33

sage about poverty can be counterproductive, preventing new people from signing up and making existing customers feel bad about their participation. However, once you are aware of this tendency to create a “charity” message, you can make sure that your input to journalists is clear and represents the program and its participants in a dignified way. In Toronto, generally, the stories that have produced the best response have been the ones that focus on the food, not on the people involved (the latter tending to lead to patronizing or embarrassing “character studies”). It is true that once the media is involved with your program, you lose some control over the message. At the same time, even if what they do with your message is not everything you might hope for, you may still derive benefit from the coverage, simply by getting your name known and tucked away in people’s heads for later reawakening. Repeating the same message over and over eventually gets the message out and makes an impression on the public. Before trying to attract media attention, make sure that you have the systems in place to deal with the response, which can be overwhelming – create an intake form, be prepared to answer all calls, know how to connect individuals to existing drop-offs (if you intend to do this). Buying ads in mainstream papers is usually too expensive. There is, however, a multitude of local community papers and newsletters (e.g. environmental organizations, churches, service clubs and residents’ associations) that will print a small article for you or include a pamphlet in their mailings. • Community presentations Good Food Box staff have done countless presentations to community groups that have expressed an interest in the program. Now that the program is better known, we are responding to presentation requests more often, rather than asking communities if we can present to them. A community, it seems, is more likely to have a successful Good Food Box drop-off location when they already have a heightened interest and is ready to commit time and energy into improving food access. Outreach can be a lot of work, but it is worth talking to any group that asks. Though it may come to nothing in the short term, often the group will reappear just as you are on the verge of forgetting you ever talked to them. To gain acceptance for the Good Food Box, it is often a good idea to promote it through an agency who is already offering programming – for example mums and tots groups or a seniors community centre – and is therefore trusted by community members. In Toronto, promoting the program through welfare workers has not worked for us, perhaps because this point of contact is simply too far removed from the actual organizing process in the community or perhaps because of the negative feelings associated with this particular environment.

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The Good Food Box

If you have a box ready-made, you can take it along and raffle it off at the presentation. Creating a sample box, if you don’t have one around from a recent delivery, can be problematic. It costs a lot of money to do on a regular basis, is difficult to lug to the meeting on public transit and can create the expectation that people will get the exact box that they saw at the meeting. It’s better if people make a leap of faith and are then pleasantly surprised when they see their first box.

Social marketing and the 5th P Social marketing is based on using either a product or advertisements to influence behavioral change. While the Good Food Box is a product, it also embodies the hope that people will change their attitude and behavior when it comes to their relationship with food. The Good Food Box has the ability to create behavior change in several ways by encouraging the participants to do the following: • To consume a greater amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. • To spend more time cooking at home and to use a wider variety of produce thanks to added recipes. • To learn to use and choose locally grown produce. • To learn and use organically grown produce. • To engage in discussions around food related issues with community members. • To participate in food related events (e.g. pot-lucks) with other Good Food Box customers.

Policy Another component of social marketing is to create behavioural change by working with various levels of government to create policies that will help you achieve your goals. For example, giving a food allowance to the citizens of a city, province or nation that could only be used at farmers’ markets or registered programs would promote direct farm to customer transactions. This would increase the incentive to purchase local produce, thereby helping to restore a viable farming sector and improve the availability of produce for low-income communities

Management Structure The Good Food Box needs a strong non-profit organization to operate the program or needs a strong organization that agrees to be the contractual partner and host. A host organization can help by offering in-kind staff time, such as fundraising or bookkeeping support or by providing infrastructure (e.g. photocopier, fax machine, space).

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Currently, our Good Food Box program operates as one part of a larger fresh produce distribution operation, which runs three programs: the Good Food Box, Fresh produce (delivery to schools and other agencies) and Good Food Markets. The management structure is as follows. Good Food Program Manager

Good Food Program Coordinator

Lead driver

Fresh Produce Project Coordinator Volunteer and Customer Service Coordinator

Volunteer Drop-off Coordinators

Warehouse Assistant

Packing Day Volunteers

Drivers

Youth Interns



Stages of Expansion The following is a description of the stages of expansion that FoodShare’s Good Food Box went through to get to its current size. An increase in human labour and equipment were necessary at various key points in order to facilitate expansion. Ongoing evaluation, revision and improvement of systems apply throughout. 40 boxes per month • Small rental truck or equivalent • Computer and printer for the newsletter • Small donated space, boxes packed by staff in the basement of FoodShare in banana boxes in the third week of the month • Produce purchased by professional produce buyer at the Ontario Food Terminal, picked up and brought to FoodShare by our driver • Simple newsletter • Boxes delivered by staff member in a rented truck • Promotional material prepared • No lunch provided for volunteers • Presentations were made to small groups of interested people

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The Good Food Box

200 boxes per month • Packed by staff in a warehouse loaned by North York Harvest (a food bank) • Staff time spent getting enough banana boxes in which to pack produce • Produce purchased by professional produce buyer at the Ontario Food Terminal • Produced received on a loading dock and transferred by skid into the warehouse • Produce delivered by staff member using rented van and dolly • Bread and cold cuts for volunteer lunches • Postcards designed and used for promotion • Public speaking opportunities with small groups • Financial books were done by volunteer, four days a month

600 boxes per month • Moved to warehouse loaned to us by the City for two days a month • Customers asked for a smaller box, so the $12 small Good Food Box was created • Purchased knives and digital and hanging scales • Continued building a regular volunteer work force, mix of incomes and lifestyles • Produce purchased at the Ontario Food terminal and occasionally directly from a farmer • Wooden loading dock, uneven floors, great funky atmosphere • Boxes moved down old wooden tables as they were packed • Beginning of composting fruit and vegetable waste, separation of cardboard from other recyclables • Customers asked for re-usable boxes • Improvement of newsletter • More forethought about lunches prepared by staff person • Two trucks needed, a refrigerated 16-foot cube van – donated, and one rented • Drivers were paid compensation • Purchased pump trucks, dollies and a portable computer

1,000 boxes per month • Moved to permanent warehouse at 200 Eastern Ave. provided by the City, with three phone lines • Staff purchased produce, picked it up and delivered it to the warehouse • Set up a roller system to make box packing easier

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• • • • •

Had a packaging station and cupboard full of bags and elastics Installed refrigeration for produce Formalized recycling of all waste Financial books done by FoodShare staff Set up a database using Microsoft Access program to manage coordinator data • Small extended cargo van purchased with a grant from the City • Regular volunteer lunches made by the new Field to Table Catering program at FoodShare

2,000 boxes per month • Customers asked us for deliveries twice a month because of welfare cuts • Tested several boxes: Caribbean, Basic and Mom-to-be (all later discontinued) • Full-time bookkeeper hired for FoodShare, accounts created for each drop-off site • New training program took over preparation of volunteer lunches • Two drivers on staff, casual drivers and helpers paid • Switched to professional buyer at the Ontario Food Terminal, produce delivered at no extra charge • More produce purchased directly from local farms and delivered in bins • Unwritten policies discussed by staff and were formally recorded • Started working on volunteer drop-off coordinators’ manual • Coordinators’ meetings helped to provide input for the manual

4,000 boxes per month • Steady group of volunteers came in on a regular basis; notable change in volunteer mix, more low-income individuals participating, that needed the Good Food Box given to them at the end of the day • Packing done each week • 4 full time drivers hired • Established Fresh Produce program, bulk produce delivered to schools for student nutrition programs • Good Food Market program started • Set up arrangement with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s (CAMH) Vocational Rehabilitation Association for weekly washing of boxes • Experimented with Wellness Box (still being distributed) and Dry Goods Box (discontinued)

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The Good Food Box

• We moved into a larger space (an under-utilized high school, operated by the Toronto District School Board) • We purchased a forklift • Created a database program for ordering using Microsoft Access (improved ordering accuracy and our ability to record the history of produce sourcing) • Increased direct farm relationships and produce sourcing

Packing location Having access to a warehouse space where the boxes can be packed is necessary. This can be in the form of a church basement, community centre room or any public space that can be donated for this purpose. As the program expands the amount of space and resources required will also grow. Currently, FoodShare occupies a 7,000 square feet warehouse with a 1,000 square feet walk-in cooler and two loading bays, and uses a forklift.

Trucks and deliveries Developing an effective delivery system is important to maximize resources. FoodShare’s drop-off locations are organized based on three things: the day the coordinators receive deliveries, geographical areas and desired times of delivery (in our case we try to only offer morning or afternoon deliveries although there are special cases). A driver who has a good knowledge of your city would be an ideal candidate to help organize the routes.

Re-usable boxes The signature green boxes that FoodShare packs its produce into help to reduce waste, make the program look more professional and help to ensure that there are boxes ready to use each packing day (previously, it was challenging to find enough cardboard boxes to pack with). The drawbacks to using the boxes are that coordinators must return them to the driver each week and that they must be washed prior to every use. Because of the volume of boxes we currently distribute, an effective inventory system needs to be established to help us track down missing boxes and encourage the return of these boxes. Coupled with damage over time, replacement boxes must be purchased every few years.

Staff Staffing costs are the single greatest expense of our Good Food Box program; yet, they are absolutely vital for this program to succeed. With the size of the Toronto

Starting Your Own Good Food Box Program

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Good Food Box program, it would be difficult to find volunteers with enough time and incentive to do the work of distributing just under 4,000 boxes per month. Another reason is that paid staff provide greater continuity. From the customer’s point of view, consistency is important and gives them confidence in the program. When quality of service is an important focus, it also helps to have staff accountability.

Systems and software As the Good Food Box increased in operation size, it became clear that custom software was needed to keep track of the distribution and payment system. Barry MacMaster, a Good Food Box drop-off coordinator, who is also a freelance programmer, designed program-specific software for us. After consulting with the Good Food Box staff, Barry produced a standalone database application based on Microsoft Access. The database solved a number of problems that the Good Food Box program had been experiencing. As the number of customers grew, it was no longer possible to record orders and tabulate bills on paper, and staff were spending an inordinate amount of time trying to keep track of all the records. Furthermore, the system was becoming less intuitive and relied on certain staff members’ memory and special knowledge of the process. The database supported a system that could easily be taught to new staff and allowed the data management workload to be shared. Ultimately, the database provides the following functions: • It keeps track of the addresses and contact information of volunteer drop-off coordinators. • It allows each order to be entered digitally and calculates bills for volunteer drop-off coordinators. Each drop-off has an account and payments can be entered as they are sent in. • It generates potential routes for drivers by grouping together nearby drop-off locations. • It allows data to be accessed from a number of different computer terminals at FoodShare, because it is run on the organization’s server network. As the program evolves, Barry continues to adapt the database to our needs. While it may not be necessary for small Good Food Box programs to develop custom software, it is likely that some form of a database be set up for record keeping.

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The Good Food Box

Financial Plan A combination of subsidy and revenue are likely to be necessary to cover all costs of running a Good Food Box program. Other than the high cost of salaries, nontraditional costs also require significant staff time and resources. Some of these nontraditional costs are listed below. • Volunteer support and development: providing lunches, supporting groups as they form neighborhood drop-off locations, facilitating volunteer training and organizing volunteer appreciation activities and events. • Dissemination of information to the community and customers: writing and distributing newsletters, holding education and training workshops. • Environmentally sound and socially just practices: reducing packaging, composting, buying locally, respecting boycotts while ensuring that you are not burdening low-income people with an untenable level of financial responsibility for these concerns. • Dissemination of information to other organizations: helping researchers, addressing groups, writing educational material and sharing success stories with other communities. • Political action: lobbying policy-makers, supporting or organizing events that involve and educate the public around hunger, poverty, the environment and collective action. These types of activities are usually not reflected in a business plan, but they are vital for an operation like the Good Food Box. Collective bulk buying power, efficiency and a small margin have taken us part of the way to financial sustainability, but for a program aiming to reach large numbers of low-income people, fundraising, volunteers and agency partnerships are key to continued survival. FoodShare’s Good Food Box program has developed over time so that customers pay for the food that goes into the box, the box itself and the delivery. The overhead costs are covered by external funding from private donations, grants, volunteer support and in-kind donations of staff and materials. Diversifying our funding sources has made the program less vulnerable to cuts or reductions from any one source. Customers seem to accept the community-business dynamic. They feel that they can demand a certain level of service, while still understanding that there are other elements to the program that make it unlike a conventional retail business. The contents of the box are the same for everyone. This helps create efficiency by minimizing waste and creating an economy of scale. An ordinary business might avoid limiting consumer choice or asking consumers to pay for a box of unknown contents.

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In our situation, the margin that a low-income customer can afford to pay cannot cover all the costs involved in operating the Good Food Box.

Funding and fundraising If you plan to cover wages, you have to think about getting not just funding, but funding that is stable and ongoing. The Good Food Box receives funding from FoodShare’s direct mail campaigns (i.e. from individual donors). This can be expensive initially but may be a fundraising method worth exploring. You’ll have to take into account that direct mail is complex and it takes time to gather momentum. FoodShare supports the Good Food Box program with resources such as an accountant and lawyer, the organization’s credit rating, money for capital purposes and many others. FoodShare has found that the Good Food Box is a program that donors respond to well. Individual donors, government and foundations respond to the innovative way that the Good Food Box helps struggling families get by, strengthens communities and helps people access healthy food. Donors are happy to see money used for a very concrete, positive and proactive solution to hunger. This has allowed us to raise money specifically for the program. Even still, some donors may be reluctant to support a program that is not exclusively for low-income groups. But our experience tells us that many low-income communities are discouraged from participating in programs that are stigmatizing; one way to ensure that the program is inclusive is to make it universally accessible. This means anyone can participate, regardless of their income level. There are very strong reasons for maintaining the program’s universality. Though studies show that higher income groups tend to eat more healthily, they still fall well short of the recommended seven to ten servings of fruit and vegetables per day. Also, mixed neighborhood drop-off sites can encourage bonds of community across various income levels.

Governments, foundations and in-kind funding Our advice is to seek funding at all levels of government, starting with the local government, moving up to the province and if possible, the federal government. Try for in-kind support from them whenever you can. The food industry is also a natural alliance, but their support will most likely take the form of letting you buy wholesale from them, allowing you to use their space for packing or letting you return excess produce. It is also useful to build partnerships with local businesses, foundations and individual donors. As long as you don’t have to compromise your program, look further than just your traditional political allies.

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The Good Food Box

When making decisions about allocating time and effort to fundraising, FoodShare staff keep in mind that it can be a lot of trouble to raise a small amount of money (e.g. bake sales, special events such as concerts or dances, or tracking down small in-kind donations of equipment). It is often more worthwhile to put the time into planning strategically for large donations, creating innovative partnerships or finding volunteers who have the talent to help.

Private sector food retail funders Many of the Good Food Box programs outside of Toronto have approached private sector food retailers for support (e.g. wholesale ordering, space, etc.). You may wonder, or they may ask, why they should give you support when you are only going to enter into competition with them. Some will support the project out of communitymindedness and others will need persuasion. Traditionally, retailers have had little interest in low-income consumers; consumer focus groups exclude those who make under $25,000 per year. A demographic study of our customers in 1995 revealed that almost one-third of Good Food Box customers have a household income of under $15,000 annually, and just around half earn less than $20,000.

What you can tell them about the Good Food Box • It targets customers with low-incomes. • It will generally not detract from sales to higher income groups because when people have money they expect and demand choice. • The Good Food Box helps people stretch their food budget, but it is not their only source of food. • It captures dollars, which were previously not being spent on fresh produce. • The Good Food Box introduces many people to an improved diet. • The Good Food Box improves personal nutrition and will reduce health care costs in the long run.

Proving the benefits to funders When applying for funding, there is a need to outline the potential benefits of the program. Research carried out by Smaller World Communications has provided some evidence that may be useful to new Good Food Box projects starting up. The research shows that Good Food Box customers actually do increase their intake of fresh fruit and vegetables. Therefore, communities not only benefit from increased food access, but also benefit from a reduction in disease and long-term health costs, given the evidence of the health benefits from increased fruit and vegetable consumption.

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Other potential benefits of the program include: community development, reducing social isolation, encouraging the formation of mutual support networks, providing peace of mind to customers concerned about the source of their food, and food and nutrition skill development through newsletters and seminars. Good Food Box dropoff sites can also become the basis for other food access projects such as community kitchens or gardens.

Show them what the Good Food Box program can do! When presenting to funders – current or prospective – show them a box. If possible, even bring one with you to a meeting. Be a bit theatrical. Invite them to a packing day and introduce them to volunteers. When funders visit or any time you have a public event, serve food that reflects your philosophy of healthy, delicious, inexpensive home cooking. Socializing with people over food is a powerful way to break down barriers and make people feel good. Don’t be afraid to speak from the heart about what food means to you and what the program means to customers.

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The Good Food Box

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Guide to Produce Sourcing & Management

Produce Sourcing FoodShare uses a variety of sources for fresh fruits and vegetables: directly from farmers, cooperatives and wholesale distributors. When FoodShare’s Good Food Box program began, the vision was to source high quality, unmarketable produce directly from farmers. This, in theory, would help to increase the income of farmers and make produce more affordable for Good Food Box recipients. The reality was that for a variety of reasons, this was easier said than done. Firstly, most farmers are integrated into large procurement arrangements making it easier to sell their whole crop to one source than it is for them to do business with a number of small operations. As well, because the number of Good Food Boxes we were packing in 1994 was still relatively small, farmers found that the transportation cost negated any profits that they would earn by selling to us. Transportation is a huge consideration in product sourcing and is often the limiting factor to purchasing directly from farmers. For a single destination trip, most farmers need to sell at least $1,000 worth of produce to make their trip worthwhile. Farmers who deliver to a number of customers in the same general area can afford to process smaller orders. Below is a list of different sourcing options and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Direct from farmers:

• Advantages: Fresh, local, no middle distributor allowing farmers to earn more per unit sold, less packaging.

• Disadvantage: Limited variety, must order enough to make it profitable for farmer to deliver, non-local items unavailable, inefficient mode of transportation via small truck, car, etc.

Guide to Produce Sourcing & Management

How you manage produce will have a huge impact on both your customers’ satisfaction and on your produce expenses. Finding produce sources that offer reliability, quality and the variety of produce you demand will also be key in enabling your program to meet its objectives. What you purchase and who you purchase it from will develop over time.

• Farmer links: Local Food Plus (Ontario): www.localflavourplus.ca Food Link (British Columbia): www.foodlinknanaimo.com Food Link (Ontario): www.foodlink-waterlooregion.ca Food Link (Ontario): www.kingstongreens.ca

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Wholesale produce distributors:

• Advantages: Great variety, imported cultural foods, low prices, one stop shopping, competitive pricing. • Disadvantages: Local product not always available, buying produce can be challenging without a buyer who knows the distributors, large amounts of packaging. • Wholesale Links: Ontario Food Terminal: www.oftb.com

Cooperative distributors:

• Advantages: Fresh, local, often offer greater variety of products, allows farmers to pool resources (transportation, storage, etc.), decreases competition amongst coop members. • Disadvantages: Imported items not available. • Cooperative links: Coop Ontario: www.coopsontario.com

Produce auctions:

• Advantages: Fresh, local, possibility of low prices, meet the farmers who grow your food. • Disadvantages: You must find transportation for the produce yourself, possibility of high prices or unavailability of what you need. • Auction links: Elmira Produce Auction (Ontario): www.foodlink-waterlooregion.ca.

Buying Practices Once you have found sources for your produce, it is important to create a buying strategy to help you make your purchasing decisions. For example, if a local farmer is selling spinach for double what you can pay for California spinach from a wholesale source, which do you choose? Below are the ordering priorities that FoodShare attempts to satisfy. If we had our wish, we would satisfy all of these ordering priorities. In general, we believe that increasing healthy food access, by distributing high quality, affordable produce, is our primary goal. Our other goals include supporting a local and sustainable food system, decreasing transportation, choosing fair trade products (when we purchase imported produce) and reducing waste.

Priorities (in order of importance for our desired program goals) • Quality a) Acceptable size, no deterioration of product (mold, soft spots, rotting). b) Used within appropriate shelf life (see appendix for storage guidelines for produce).

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• Value a) Prices paid for conventional and organic produce are lower than current retail prices. b) Produce purchased directly from farmers should not be more than 10-15% more expensive than the price offered by a wholesaler. c) Organic produce should only be put into conventional boxes if the organic produce is not more than 10-15% more expensive than the price offered by a conventional wholesaler or conventional farmer (whichever is lower). • Appropriateness a) Fruits and vegetables are known and used by the majority of cultural groups. b) Any unfamiliar fruits and vegetables are accompanied by recipes and information. • Local and Seasonal a) Support local supply and distribution networks – purchase as much as possible as close to home as possible – Ontario first, then Canada. b) Feature in-season produce. • Sustainable Growing Practices a) Certified organic (always for organic boxes). b) Support Local Food Plus certified producers (Ontario). c) Discourage genetically modified seeds. d) Encourage heritage varieties. • Packaging a) Purchase in bins and bulk to reduce packaging, use paper bags over plastic when suitable. b) No waxed produce. • Fair trade a) Purchase fair trade products if available. Visit www.transfair.ca for more information on Fair trade products For example, if we had to make a decision whether to put local broccoli at $14.75 per case, imported broccoli at $15.75 a case, or local organic broccoli at $25 a case in our large Good Food Box, we could use our priority list to help us decide. We also know from experience that the local farmer who is selling broccoli at $14.75 often sends us spoiled produce. Following the priorities, and assuming we had no other alternatives, we would choose quality over locally produced, and value over sustainable growing practices. In this particular scenario, local farmers would not benefit directly. Maintaining a program that offers customers value and quality will allow us to thrive and grow, and reach

Guide to Produce Sourcing & Management

Did you know: • About 11 percent of the world’s surface is covered by arable land. • Canadians use 2.5 times the amount of agricultural land per person than the world average, yet many Canadians go hungry. • The FAO believes that, even in face of urbanization, there are sufficient under-utilized lands to meet our food production requirements. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997

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all of our goals. If the food box had poor quality food or was too expensive the program might fail which doesn’t help anybody.

Box Contents and Produce Mix Strive for a mixture of heavy staples, leafy greens and a variety of fruits. The weight of the box can be an important indicator of value to people, but at the same time you need a variety of tastes, textures and colours to make the box interesting and nutritious. Reaching a balance between cultural, local, and price preferences is difficult. A good general principle is to remember that the food cannot appear too frivolous or challenging, for example, despite their nutritional value, radishes and parsley are perceived by many as garnishes, not food that fills you. Sometimes you may find that low-income customers may be concerned that you are wasting money if you include an item that they ordinarily consider too expensive to purchase. We discovered this from the many telephone calls we received when we included beautiful boxes of strawberries in a January Good Food Box. As it happened, we had gotten them for a good price, but we neglected to mention this in the newsletter. So if there’s a special reason that you’re putting in a particular item – because it’s in season or “on sale” – it is worth explaining this to customers. We try to put in one special item each time that is either normally a luxury (e.g. a mango or strawberries) or is slightly challenging (e.g. sprouts or rapini). Most customers love this element of surprise every time; it’s like finding a little gift in their box. One of the frequent reservations we hear before people decide to buy the box is “will it include only low-value items like carrots, onions, and potatoes?” To reassure people about the variety and value of its contents, it helps to make sample lists available as part of the promotional material (always making clear that this is just a sample, and that the contents vary every time). Including an item that may be considered “exotic” by a number of your customers also requires that you educate your customers about the nutritional value and possible uses in the newsletter. More than one challenging item per box is probably too much, since they may decide that they don’t like a food or can’t prepare it.

Taking ethnic diversity into account You need to know the ethnic groups to which your customers and potential customers belong, and learn something about these groups’ eating patterns. Aside from the fruits and vegetables that are specifically linked to one cultural group, each group may prefer a particular variety of a fruit or have different criteria for quality. We have discovered that producing ethno-specific boxes is very labour intensive and they are difficult to promote without strong ties to the community in question.

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The Good Food Box

In this area, our experience with the Caribbean Food Box compared to the Afri-Can Food Basket is illustrative. The Caribbean Box was introduced by FoodShare as a variation of the Good Food Box for $20, but never sold very well, despite the high quality of produce. The Afri-Can Food Basket organizers approached FoodShare about starting their own box as a community development project for the African and Caribbean communities. They started a small office in the FoodShare warehouse, tagged onto the buying structure, but did all their own packing and promotion. Because of the organizers’ ties and connection to their community, they were able to integrate the Afri-Can Food Basket more successfully into their community. Ultimately, however, the Afri-Can Food Basket organization began to shift its energies away from food boxes and toward community gardening and so that box is no longer available in Toronto.

The importance of quality Not only must there be the appearance of quality in the box, according to variable notions of value but also actual quality. Buying the highest quality produce is not much more expensive than buying inferior quality seconds or discards, though the gap in customer appreciation between the two is huge. Obviously, food that is spoiled, spoiling, or about to spoil is a loss to the customer. Contrary to popular opinion, produce is not very expensive, especially in Canada, one of the countries where people spend the lowest percentage of their income on food purchases. The staple Ontario crops, like carrots, onions, potatoes, apples, etc., are available almost all year round, and their cost is fairly stable (i.e. a two-pound bag of carrots costs approximately $0.66 at any time of the year). Big fluctuations in cost occur with imported items, depending on other countries’ growing conditions and local seasons, so it pays to learn about agricultural conditions and seasonal variations in other countries in order to know roughly what you should be paying for items at various times. Having someone involved in your program – a buyer, staff person, wholesaler or experienced volunteer – who knows about the agricultural system, food prices and food storage and handling, is vital to ensuring that you put out a quality product. When we do receive complaints about damaged or spoiled items, our practice is to offer a credit that can be used towards the customer’s next box. From our point of view, this is more feasible than driving around the city replacing items. However, we do have to remember that a low-income person may need that food right away and we try to respond accordingly.

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In every Good Food Box we try to meet the following criteria: a) Staple foods (e.g. potatoes, carrots, onions, apples) b) Something new or different to push the food experience c) Luxury items (that people would not buy themselves) d) Salad items e) Combination of vegetables that work well together in many recipes f) A selection of fruits (three varieties) g) Packed in clean, re-usable boxes and lids h) Beautiful appearance i) Newsletters with recipes featuring a local vegetable or fruit j) Content sheet with local produce marked with an asterisk, also noting different varieties Below is a chart that shows the types of produce most desired by customers of the FoodShare Toronto Good Food Box.

A Good Food Box Top Ten

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The Good Food Box

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Number of requests by customers

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Ordering Spreadsheets and Technique FoodShare’s Good Food Box team uses several Microsoft Excel spread sheets to calculate the number of cases of produce that need to be ordered for packing day. You will find a copy of one of our spreadsheets in the appendix for reference.

Presentation of Boxes Box contents should be presented with the customers in mind. Creating a box that is aesthetically appealing and reduces spoilage or product damage is our goal. Creating an attractive box starts at the ordering stage. A mix that is very colourful will naturally look more exciting and is often perceived to have value and be fresh. Putting labels facing upward also gives the impression that the box was packed with care. If you are using cardboard boxes to hold the produce, pay special attention to the cleanliness of the boxes, the labels on the boxes themselves, and their capacity to carry weight. We use a three layer approach to putting fruits and vegetables in the box.

Layer one:

Root vegetables, cabbage, squash, melons, celery, apples and pears. Place bags flat on the bottom with the label pointing upwards.

Layer two:

Tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, beans, bananas, and grapes. Place any smaller items in a bag to prevent them from rolling to the bottom and getting damaged when they are moved around on delivery.

Layer three:

Lettuce, spinach, berries, and any other greens. The lid of the box should be put on immediately after the last items are inserted. This will reduce the green leaves’ exposure to air, which will dry them out and cause them to wilt. A good fitting lid will help preserve these items. Berries such as strawberries must be covered so they do not roll out of their box and get damaged.

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Sample box contents August 28th – August 31st, 2007 * Ontario produce

LARGE Good Food Box Contents 6 Corn* 1 Bunch Carrots* 4 lbs. Potatoes* 1Bag Bartlett Pears* 1 Bag Apples* 1 Cantaloupe 1 Pint Mushrooms* 1 lb. Plum Tomatoes* 1 English Cucumber* 2 lbs. Onion* 1 Bunch Broccoli* 1 Romaine Lettuce* 1 Bunch Bananas

LARGE Organic Box Contents 6 Corn* 1 Bunch Kale* 1 Bunch Leek* 1 Spring Mix* 3 Hot House Tomatoes 1 Sugar Melon* 3 lbs. Apples* 5 Peaches 2 ½ lbs. White Potatoes*

WELLNESS BOX Contents 2 Corn* 1 Bag Broccoli* 4 Bananas 1 Bag Celery* 1 Bag Spring Mix 4 Peaches* 1 Red Onion* 4 Potatoes* 1 Pint Cherry Tomatoes 1 Bag Carrots*

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The Good Food Box

1 Pint Mushrooms* ½ Cantaloupe 4 Oranges

SMALL Good Food Box Contents 4 Corn* 1 Bunch Carrots* ½ Basket Peaches* ½ Basket Tomatoes* 1 English Cucumber* 2 lbs. Onion* 1 Bunch Broccoli* 1 Romaine Lettuce* 1 Bunch Bananas

SMALL Organic Box Contents 4 Corn* 1 Bunch Kale* 1 Bunch Leek* 1 Spring Mix* 2 Hot House Tomatoes 1 Sugar Melon* 1 ½ lbs. Apples* 3 Peaches

FRUIT Box Contents 1 Bag Apples* 1 Bunch Banana 1 Bag Pears* 1 Cantaloupe 1 Basket Peaches*

Produce Management Basics There is a science to properly storing and keeping produce fresh for the maximum amount of time. Most of the produce you will purchase will be stored for only several days and therefore will not need the kind of attention and environmental control that many produce distributors must use. It is still important to understand the basics behind proper storage of produce so you can maximize freshness by storing produce

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in as close to ideal conditions as possible. Here are some guidelines to help ensure you are delivering high quality produce. 1. Deliveries of produce to the warehouse should be as close as possible to the packing date of the Good Food Boxes. Our produce is delivered one day prior to packing. 2. Check the quality of produce before you purchase the product (e.g. at an auction or Food Terminal) or check the quality of produce before you sign for the delivery. Also make sure that your volunteers or staff who are packing the box check the quality before putting the items into the box. Often the place where the produce is cut from the growing plant will give you a good idea of its freshness. 3. Put all items into the refrigerator immediately, except for potatoes, onions, garlic, and bananas. Put potatoes, garlic and onions in a cool dark and dry space (keep onions and garlic separate from potatoes). If you do not have a cool, dark and dry space, put the potatoes, onions and garlic into the refrigerator. Bananas will discolor in the refrigerator if stored for more than a few days. Be warned that bananas ripen very quickly when they are warm and close together. Separate boxes of bananas to prevent them from ripening too quickly. See the guidelines in the appendix for more details on proper produce storage. 4. Use the list of produce shelf life in the appendix as a guide of when it is appropriate to use older produce from an earlier packing day. 5. Keep all greens covered at all times, especially outside of the refrigerator. The air will pull the moisture from the leaves causing them to wilt and look terrible. 6. If you run short of a certain produce item for your boxes, substitute with left over items that will not last until the next packing day. 7. Find a use for the left over produce that will not last until the next packing day. Sell, donate or offer these items to your volunteers or to a local food bank. 8. Compost the items that are spoiled and return these nutrients back into the food system via community gardens and farmer’s fields.

Organic Good Food Boxes Organic production is a system that integrates “cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” (Source: USDA, National Organic Program.)

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The majority of Good Food Boxes sold each month contain conventional produce that we purchase directly from farms and the Ontario Food Terminal. However, we also distribute the organic Good Food Box in small ($22) and large ($32) sizes. In an average month we sell 3,000 to 4,000 Good Food Boxes, about 750 of these are organic or 20 percent of the total. The primary goal of the Good Food Box is to ensure access to good, healthy produce with a focus on creating a box that low-income communities can afford. Our experience is that some of our consumers find organic attractive because they want to know where and how their food is produced, and believe that organic food is healthier for themselves and the environment. We agree that with the intensity of the environmental crises facing the planet, reducing pesticide use, decreasing fertile soil loss, decreasing transportation of food and decreasing packaging are all important goals. FoodShare supports the distribution of organic food because we believe that there are long-term health problems associated with the overuse of pesticides and herbicides. The problem with organic food is that it is still prohibitively expensive for the margin we need to work in for the Good Food Box. In the past decade, there has been tremendous growth in interest in organic food, and corresponding growth in the organic food industry. While “organic” was recently considered a fringe interest, it is now a household term. However, organic products remain more expensive and are just as likely to be imported as conventional produce. The reason that organic is generally more expensive is because of the more labor-intensive nature of chemical-free methods of production and the still comparatively small scale of the organic market. This means that higher prices are the only way to make organic agriculture viable. Many people believe that as the market grows and the organic food system becomes more efficient, prices will decrease and become more accessible to low-income people.

Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term. David Suzuki

In short, we have learned to be practical. We know that we can’t change the agricultural and distribution system, support low-income farmers and lowincome consumers all at the same time. From what we have learned from our own experience, we would say that some, or all, of the following factors may help groups to obtain organic produce inexpensively enough to be accessible for low-income consumers: • Build a relationship with an organic farmer (or farmers) who believes in the concept of alternative distribution enough (and can afford) to support you by giving you lower prices.

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• Make the commitment to a farmer to buy a predetermined amount of their crops in an upcoming season, thereby lowering the risk for the farmer and increasing their incentive to offer you a lower price. • A geographical situation that puts you close to your sources, and/or an ability to pick up produce, thereby eliminating costly and difficult deliveries to far-off places. • An order that is large enough to get you a price-break (assuming there is enough supply available). Whenever organic produce can be purchased cheaply enough or when we have an excess of a certain organic item, we will put these items into the conventional box. This way, customers who cannot afford the organic Good Food Box can at least get a sample of some of its items.

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Human Resources & Volunteer Coordination

If you decide to incorporate volunteers into any of the essential functions of running your program, it is important to take your time and to do so carefully. Before building a volunteer team, think long and hard about the infrastructure that is necessary to support them and how each of them can have roles that are effectively aligned with the organization’s mission. Volunteers are invaluable to growth and the sustainability of a program but it is important to recognize that creating and maintaining a volunteer program can be challenging and requires energy, time and resources. Unpaid staff are inherently less accountable because generally speaking, volunteers will contribute their leisure time (i.e. they may also work another job or go to school) and will not have as much training or experience as staff. Volunteers will require support, direction and management. A recruitment process is also necessary to ensure that we select volunteers that will provide committed support to the program and that will gain meaningful experiences from working together.

Staff Though FoodShare’s Good Food Box program relies heavily on the work and enthusiasm of volunteers, from coordinators to people who pack the boxes, its success also rests on the consistency and dedication of its paid staff. FoodShare has managed to create several stable jobs, but job creation has never been our main goal. To create even one job is very difficult. Though providing employment would be a worthy project in itself, the primary goal is to increase food access for as many people as possible. Flexibility is a key attribute of our staff: everyone has to be willing to do everything, from going out to speak to groups who are interested in the Good Food Box to packing boxes, to changing their roles as the program evolves. FoodShare staff are also flexible in their hours of work, staying late as needed to pack boxes or make presentations, then taking time off in lieu to make up for this. Stress levels can also be very high due to the pressures of meeting deadlines and dealing with product or delivery problems.

Human Resources & Volunteer Coordination

Volunteers

FoodShare’s preference is to hire staff from the communities that we serve (especially those who have shown tremendous dedication and leadership yet have barriers

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to employment). These community members have the advantage of first hand knowledge of food insecurity and often can better identify the needs of the communities that we serve. If you decide to hire community members with growth potential, and you have the energy and resources to train them, you may choose to go this route. This may place a lot of pressure on the more experienced members of the staff, but it brings welcome diversity and sensitivity to the program. Ultimately, it’s your choice.

Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators Community members coordinate Good Food Box drop-off locations and are responsible for placing the orders on behalf of the participants in their group. Coordinators must also collect payments, pay FoodShare, and coordinate the distribution of the full boxes to the participants when they arrive. Community coordinators play a key role in promoting the box and selling the idea to their neighbors. Ideally, volunteer drop-off coordinators are well connected and respected in their community, show strong support of the Good Food Box concept, and can offer reassurance of the quality and value of the pre-paid produce. Volunteer drop-off coordinators have the satisfaction of meeting their neighbours and bringing good, healthy food to their neighbourhood. A free Good Food Box is also offered for every ten boxes that are delivered to their drop-off as a type of honorarium. From the point of view of the FoodShare staff, cost efficiency is best served when a large number of boxes are delivered to each location. It simply costs too much to make deliveries of less than ten boxes. To some extent, free box incentives help keep order numbers up, but we have also found that from an individual or agency point of view, numbers of not much more than ten boxes seem to be optimal. If a drop-off point gets too large for one person to coordinate easily, a good solution is to divide up into smaller groups of ten and recruit more drop-off coordinators. Initially, coordinators usually phone in to inquire about the Good Food Box and how they can be involved. They are asked to recruit their own friends or neighbours to make a minimum order of five boxes. After that, they have the option of making their drop-off location “open” or “closed” to referrals. If the location is open, we will direct interested potential customers in the neighbourhood to it. If it is closed, we leave it up to the coordinator to recruit more members. One issue to be aware of is that handling money can present particular problems to low-income people. Keeping a lot of cash in the house can be worrisome, and for people on social assistance, depositing it in a bank account can appear as though they are receiving extra income. Money orders and cheques cost money. One solution to this type of problem is for a neighbourhood agency to take the cash and then issue its own cheques.

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Drop-off coordinator volunteer guide As a general principle, it is good to implement procedures for drop-off coordinators from the very beginning. That being said, coordinators do need to feel that they have the ability to run their drop-offs in a way that is appropriate to their personal and community circumstances, to allow for some flexibility. Our tendency has been to be overly flexible (allowing coordinators to pay balances later, allowing customers to take the reusable boxes home, delivering a missing tomato, etc.). While this flexibility has its virtues, it can also threaten the very existence of the program by increasing administrative costs, or at the very least, by creating an uncomfortable level of chaos. See the appendix for an example of the information package we give to new coordinators.

Host sites Host sites for the Good Food Box drop-offs vary from front porches, to co-ops, social housing buildings, daycares, churches, parent-child resource centres and community centres. It is helpful when a local agency can make a commitment to support the drop-off, especially by helping to find a substitute coordinator if the original one leaves. Although reliable ordering and money management are functions often best served by local agency staff, there is often reluctance from agencies because of staffing shortages. Agency coordination can also undermine the community development angle of the project. The best combination is when a community volunteer and agency staff person work together. Generally, it is not a good idea to distribute the Good Food Box through programs that attract people from a long distance – the box is heavy (it weighs up to 50 pounds) and most clients use public transit. Connecting people to a drop-off near their home is a better idea. Host sites often work the Good Food Box into other programming, or use it as a take-off point for other food related programs. Agincourt Community Services Association in Scarborough is a good example of both. They started by operating a food bank, then added a Good Food Box drop-off site, community kitchen, skills exchange program and community garden. Participants are often involved in more than one program. We have several agency stops that have a food bank. It has always been our goal to make sure that every food bank offers the Good Food Box as one option. But although this can be fruitful, it can also be problematic due to negative associations of food banks as being places for food emergencies and handouts and not places you go to for fresh produce. There is also the problem of the cost of the Good Food Box. Although the Good Food Box can help a low-income family stretch a modest budget and increase access

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to affordable, healthy food, the Good Food Box does cost between $12 and $32 and can be too expensive for very low-income communities. Several churches in Toronto that also operate food banks have developed an innovative way to support low-income access to the Good Food Box. One church in particular increased the subsidy and covered an additional $5 of each $12 small Good Food Box, asking that customers only pay $7, thus making it more affordable.

Packing Day Volunteers Volunteers are seldom paid, not because they are worthless, but because they are PRICELESS! Anonymous

FoodShare relies heavily on volunteers to pack and clean the boxes, maintain the warehouse and most recently, to help write the newsletter. Each week, at least 20 volunteers come to the warehouse to help with packing. Once people come a few times and find out that it’s fun, they come regularly and the word begins to spread. We now have a large pool of more than 20 volunteers and therefore have created a volunteer schedule that ensures that there aren’t too many volunteers on any given day and that there is enough work to make the experience meaningful and engaging. The guiding principles for Good Food Box volunteer management are that volunteers deserve to be treated with respect, and that we should try to understand and consider their needs. Observation and interaction has led staff to the conclusion that volunteers help out for a number of reasons. It could be because they want to support a program they believe in, to get out of the house and counter social isolation, to give structure to their lives or because they need the free Good Food Box that is given to them as compensation.

Volunteer responsibilities and expected behavior A lot is expected from volunteers, as well. They must go through a recruitment process (nowadays, there are more willing volunteers than spaces), show up on time and be prepared to work from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. A fair amount is needed from them physically (although not all volunteers must do heavy lifting). A staff person with a strong personality and a loud voice is a great asset as a packing day coordinator. It is important that the coordinator maintains control of the situation, ensures that people are respectful to each other, that all volunteers are treated the same, and that everyone follows proper safety procedures. With good systems and equipment, FoodShare has found that 30 people can pack 1,000 boxes in six hours, with an hour for lunch.

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Volunteer compensation Volunteers receive a Good Food Box for helping out, though some give it away or donate it back to FoodShare. This system was introduced not so much as a way to encourage volunteering through some form of payment, as it was to recognize the economic reality of the many low-income volunteers who are involved. The free box is an “honorarium,” a token of thanks for volunteers’ highly appreciated and necessary contribution. A delicious and nutritious lunch is also served to volunteers during their shift.

Coordinating a Packing Day Organization and strategic planning are key element to an enjoyable and productive packing day. Having at least 3 people per 100 Good Food Boxes will allow you to finish packing in about 4 hours. Preparing and posting on the wall packing posters that outline exactly what goes in each box is great for a quick reference. Setting up pre-packaging stations, where bulk food is divided into the appropriate portions ahead of time is also helpful. Newsletters and content sheets should be printed and snacks and beverages prepared, prior to each packing day. Our packing day starts at 8 a.m. The produce is moved by skid and is placed 2-3 feet away from two 15-feet roller racks. On either side of the rollers, leaving room to walk in between, the skids are placed in order of the different levels of packing (for example: root vegetables at the beginning of the line, tomatoes in the middle and lettuce at the end). While the assembly lines of produce and rollers are being set up, volunteers start to arrive between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. They are welcomed, given name tags and given a moment to have a coffee or tea, wash their hands and say hello to other volunteers. The volunteers set up at the pre-packing stations where they start pre-packing the bulk produce into the appropriate portions. When all the items of a particular Good Food Box (7 different types: Large, Small, Fruit, Wellness, Large Organic and Small Organic) are ready, volunteers are set up in assembly lines and given an item or two to put into each box. Special attention must be made to make sure that each volunteer is given a job that corresponds to his/her abilities, strength and speed. The staff coordinator calls out each item from the packing posters and makes sure that a volunteer accounts for each item. The staff coordinator reminds the volunteers that the produce must be handled with care and touched only by their clean hands. The coordinator also stresses that any produce that is of poor quality does not go into the box. The organizer then packs the first box on the line, explaining where each of the items go to maximize space, beauty and reduce spoilage and produce damage.

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Two volunteers are asked to put in newsletters and transfer the boxes off the line and onto a skid. The real trick of a packing day is keeping a large group of volunteers engaged and happy. This can be achieved by planning ahead. Decide on the order you wish to pack your different types of boxes and focus on finishing all the pre-packing required for those boxes according to that schedule. Once these items are pre-packed and the line is started, any additional volunteers who are not needed in the assembly line can prepack for the next box. We give volunteers one fifteen-minute break and several short breaks as we organize the next line or stations. We provide fresh fruit, coffee, tea and water throughout the day. Volunteers are given a “brief” or “pep talk” during each packing day, which orients them about safety and food handling issues and reminds them of the importance of their work. It also helps to give them a greater understanding of the principles, operation and ethics of the Good Food Box, by explaining where the food comes from, what the good deals are at the moment and what’s in season. If a farmer drops by, she/ he will often take a moment to chat with the group. Around noon, volunteers are invited to join the staff for a prepared meal. The meal includes the recipes from the week’s newsletter with the feature vegetable highlighted. Eating lunch together is one of the activities that help create the remarkable degree of camaraderie that reigns on packing days. Over time, volunteers have come to know each other, and there is a lot of joking around, singing and fun. There are now enough regular volunteers that they impart a sense of continuity and calmness to the proceedings. FoodShare staff try to create an atmosphere where there is respect for the food itself – not allowing it to be thrown around or handled too roughly. The beauty of the food, and the sense of bounty created by a warehouse full of food can act as a healing influence on people who are undergoing a lot of stress in their lives. But, in the same vein, it is important that the volunteers feel they can participate in this bounty, by having the opportunity to eat and take food away with them. When all of the boxes are packed and put into the refrigerator, the warehouse is cleaned up and the volunteers are given a Good Food Box to take home.

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The Good Food Box Newsletter

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Why Add a Newsletter to the Good Food Box? The newsletter is a very important part of the Good Food Box. It allows customers to understand more about our vision and mission, and helps customers to get to know the staff who are putting the Good Food Box together on a regular basis. The newsletter can be an effective way to educate customers about nutrition, local and sustainable agriculture.

Writing a Newsletter That Speaks to Your Customers Like all other parts of the Good Food Box process, the newsletter is very deliberately put together. It speaks in a simple and easy to understand language though it is often about complicated issues. The newsletter is written in a voice that is accessible to a wide readership and contains content that is applicable and useful to lives of the Good Food Box customers. The amount of time and resources will have an effect on how well you are able to capture the attention of readers. A newsletter can be as basic as cutting and pasting cited articles and recipes from the internet or as advanced as writing articles yourself and including tried and tested recipes. We publish a Good Food Box newsletter every other week so we have a generous amount of time to write articles and test recipes. In our case, it is always one page, double-sided and includes: • A featured vegetable or fruit, including its history and nutritional analysis. • • • •

Two to three recipes, usually including the featured vegetable or fruit. An article about an upcoming event or an emerging food policy or political issue. The dates of the next delivery and how to contact staff. The names of the farms we are buying produce from that week.

The Good Food Box Newsletter

The Good Food Box Newsletter

The newsletter also helps us to communicate with our customers about who is growing our food, packing the boxes, and how we make our ordering decisions. Here are some benefits of including a newsletter in our boxes: • Recipes and information on how to use and store produce allow us to include a larger variety of fresh produce in the boxes including more unusual vegetables like rapini or beets. • Articles on current food issues allow FoodShare to educate customers about the benefits of healthy eating, supporting local agriculture, and making healthy food more accessible.

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Newsletter Resources

The newsletter is a great way to educate your customers about the food in their boxes and current news and trends that affect our access to fresh and healthy food. Here are several sites that offer current food security news and e-news mailings. • www.foodshare.net • www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_index.htm • www.gtalocalfood.ca

Does the Newsletter Get Read?

The Good Food Box Newsletter

FoodShare conducted a survey in November of 2007. We asked participants to answer several questions regarding the usefulness of the newsletter. Here are the questions and results. 1. Do you read the newsletter? Opinion Yes No No response Total

Responses 329 24 1 354

Percent 93% 7% 0% 100%

2. How do you feel about the newsletter? Opinion Responses Like the recipes 261 Like the vegetable profile 242 Like the article 216 I never look at it 12 I don’t care for it 5 I find it too hard to read 0 Total 736

Percent 74% 68% 61% 3% 1% 0%

3. Do you use the recipes in the newsletter? Opinion Responses I sometimes try the recipes 235 I try most recipes 57 I never try the recipes 51 I try all the recipes 7 No response 4 Total 354

Percent 66% 16% 14% 2% 1% 100%

The newsletter remains a very successful part of the box. It is a good way to communicate with customers and is considered a value-added component of getting the box. The questions above reveal that nearly all Good Food Box customers read our newsletter. See the Appendix for several examples of the Toronto GFB Newsletter.

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Profiles of Other Good Food Box Programs

Name of program: Bonne Boîte Bonne Bouffe / Good Food Box Location: Montreal, Quebec Contact info: Jamie McDonald, regional coordinator (514) 344-4494 [email protected] Boxes per month: approximately 1,000 Program start date: September 11th, 2007 Area served: island of Montreal Price and type of boxes: Large $16 Medium $10 Small $7 Mixture of vegetables and fruit, conventionally grown Margin on each box: ± 22% Price comparison to local retailers: A savings of 20-30% on the price of the small box, 25-35% on the price of the medium box and 35-50% on the price of the large box. History: The Montreal Good Food Box is a food security program that has been serving the Notre-Dame-de-Grace community since September 2003 and expanded into a regional program in September 2007. The idea arose from a conference held in March 2002 where a number of community groups from the area agreed that a collective food-buying program would be the next logical step to address food security and make healthy food more accessible in the area. Where do you get your produce? From a fruit and veggie distributor How do you do your deliveries? We divide Montreal into East, Central, South & West zones. We do the Central runs on Tuesday afternoons, the South & West on Wednesdays and the East on Thursdays. For now, we deliver once every 2 weeks. As we get more orders, we will start doing deliveries each week to open up delivery time for new neighbourhoods.

Profiles of Other Good Food Box Programs

Profiles of Other Good Food Box Programs

The Montreal Good Food Box:

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6

How do you run your packing day? We receive our produce on Mondays and pack on Tuesdays. Our truck driver starts to place the produce around the packing tables early on Tuesday morning. Volunteers start coming in around 9:00 a.m. and continue placing the produce around the tables. Once everything is in place, volunteers take their places (approximately 6-8 people per table and one table for each box size) and determine who is putting what in the box. Each person is instructed to make sure the person before them has put their item in the box before putting their own and to discard any produce that is not of top quality or isn’t fresh. We usually finish packing around 12:00 noon. The boxes for Tuesday deliveries are immediately loaded in the truck as they are produced. Partnerships We have an advisory committee made up of various community organizations working in food security that make various decisions about where the program is going and how. How are you funded? Centraide finances the employee salary (regional co-ordination); Moisson Montreal lends us a space for storing, packing, and refrigerating the boxes, an office, and a truck for deliveries; and Fond de bienfaisance des employés de Bombardier finances other aspects of the program. We are currently seeking other financial partners to expand the program further. What are some success and challenges that you wish to share with other Good Food Box programs that are starting? Successes: We’ve been able to go from 300 boxes to 1,000 boxes per month in a 6 month period using very little publicity other than word of mouth and have found that seeing the boxes with the fresh produce inside is publicity enough to get people interested in buying the box. Partnering with community organizations has been a good way of implementing the program in various neighbourhoods. We’ve also been able to involve health organizations that subsidize boxes for pregnant women. Many volunteers also do home deliveries for the elderly or people with reduced mobility. Challenges: Stabilizing our volunteer force and finding a reliable delivery person have been significant challenges to overcome. Dealing with the sporadic and fast development of the program has also been quite a challenge.

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The Saskatoon Good Food Box

Name of program: CHEP’s Good Food Box Location: Saskatoon, SK Contact info: (306) 655-5387 or (306) 655-5619 or [email protected] Boxes per month: 1,200 on average Program start date: 1997 Area served: Saskatoon and area Price and type of boxes: Regular Fruit and Vegetable - $17.00; Small Fruit and Vegetable - $12.00; Mini Fruit and Vegetable - $8.00; Large Fruit - $20.00; Small Fruit - $12.00; Organic Fruit and Vegetable - $30.00 Margin on each box: approx 25% Price comparison to local retailers A savings of about 25% History: It started in 1997 with about 40 boxes and has grown since then. Where do you get your produce? We purchase from local producers as much as possible and a wholesaler (The Grocery People) when local produce isn’t available. How do you do your deliveries? The deliveries are done on the afternoon of the packing day. Depending on the number of boxes being packed we have one cube truck and a cargo van, or two cube trucks and the van (for when orders are over 600 boxes). The city is broken up into West, East and North routes, with the North and West routes combined when orders are smaller. Each route has a driver and driver helper and they are each paid an honorarium and gifted a Good Food Box for their work, with the exception of one driver who is a CHEP staff person and paid a salary. If everything goes well the deliveries take about 4 hours. We request that groups have 10 boxes ordered for delivery but we are flexible. How do you run your packing day? We rent a gymnasium in a local church for 2 days each packing week. Tuesday is pre-packing day and we have volunteers come to wash boxes (Rubbermaid tubs), pack the potatoes and make sure the gym is set up for packing day. On packing day (Wed-

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nesday) the produce arrives from the producers and is unloaded by volunteers. The gym is set up with two different production lines, one for the fruit and vegetable boxes and one for the fruit boxes. One of the coordinators directs the people unloading the produce to the table where it will be sorted. The tables are labeled with each different type of produce and the amount that goes into each box (e.g. the number of regular boxes to be packed times the amount of carrots that goes in each one). The volunteers sort and bag the produce if necessary and then we break for snack. After snack each volunteer takes a place on the production line and the boxes are packed and taken directly out to the delivery trucks. The remaining boxes are lined up along the wall for pickups in the afternoon. If everything goes as planned the boxes are packed and on the trucks by noon and lunch is served for all the volunteers. How are you funded? The United Way of Saskatoon What are some successes and challenges that you wish to share with other Good Food Box programs that are starting? Successes: For volunteers we have arrangements with a work experience class at a local high school and with an adult education program. The high school class comes to wash the Rubbermaid boxes and helps on packing day. The adult education students come on packing day and help with packing and often work as driver helpers or clean up the hall. These arrangements provide the students with work skills and experience and provide a reliable source of volunteers for the Good Food Box. Challenges: We have struggled with getting the produce from the warehouse to our packing site. The delivery truck was often late or the produce wasn’t ready at the warehouse when the truck arrived. This threw off our whole packing day and was stressful for the coordinators and volunteers. We recently received a grant to purchase our own refrigerated cube truck and now we can pick up the produce the day before packing day and keep it refrigerated overnight.

The Innisfil Good Food Box: Name of program: Location: Contact info: Boxes per month: Area served:

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The Innisfil Good Food Box Innisfil Ontario Lori Nikkel (416) 363-6441 ex 230 approximately 100 Innisfil area

The Good Food Box

History It began innocently enough. As a long-time employee of FoodShare and Manager of the Student Nutrition programs, which enables students across Toronto to access healthy food at school, I have always loved the Good Food Box and known how important a program it is for so many reasons. Schools I work with love ordering produce through the Fresh Produce program and it really helps children eat more fresh vegetables and produce. One day while reading the local Innisfil paper, I came across an advertisement requesting participation in the development of a Good Food Box program in Innisfil. The first meeting was held at the local library and had a great turnout, even the Deputy Mayor and a journalist from the local paper turned up. More importantly we had a great cross-section of our community and everyone was eager to get started. Initially we went around the group and identified what brought everybody out to this meeting. The reasons varied from helping low income individuals, supporting local farmers, getting more involved in community development initiatives, and improving community health by promoting a diet with abundant fruits and vegetables. Our membership included a member from the Barrie Community Health Centre, a resident school expert, a Barrie Good Food Box volunteer, a recipe guru, a Doctor, a Youth coordinator, a volunteer recruiter, and two individuals who really wanted to start a farmers’ market but thought a Good Food Box program would be a good place to start. Finding Produce sources I guess the most important question was who was going to supply us with the best quality fruits and vegetables that we wanted to put in the box. We knew some of the suppliers that other Good Food Boxes were using and we knew some local farmers. Thus, we struck a committee to investigate the best possible source for the bulk of the produce. The committee also researched smaller providers that would be able to supplement the box with local produce. After thorough investigation, we found a great provider for all our fruits and vegetables who really believed in local food and agreed to source from smaller growers as much as possible in each season. Creating education materials for the box In addition to the great produce, we wanted to include some education into the box. As we had a couple of doctors on the committee, we developed a “Doctor’s Corner” section of the newsletter to educate us about the nutritional importance of the food in the box. We also had several wonderful home chefs who provided the newsletters with family recipes, and another member who would use the newsletter to link current media stories to the box.

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Finding a location to pack the boxes Another very important component of our endeavor was finding a location to pack the Good Food Box. We knew a few things. 1. The location had to be free. 2. The location had to be central to the population. 3. It had to be big enough to pack up to 100 boxes. 4. The location had to be insured. After much discussion about schools, town space and churches we agreed that the local Lions Hall would be the most suitable place. Now that we had chosen this location, we needed to make sure they would choose us. So we asked to be invited to the next Lions Dinner to explain what the Good Food Box was and how important partnering with them was for us. As you can imagine there were a few questions because many residents use the hall for many things. But after we answered all the questions, we were delighted to hear the Lions roar (indicating their acceptance of us using the space). Setting up an ordering system How would people place their orders? With only volunteers, most of whom worked all day, it was difficult to identify one place for the orders to be dropped off. And then it came to us. We couldn’t take the orders, but the local businesses could. They were at their workplaces all day. We called up the local Business Association and spoke with the President requesting some time to speak at the next meeting. We were a little nervous. Why would a business want to take on more work? The local business immediately realized how important this would be for the community and were opening their doors to include us. Not only were they more than happy to be an order and collection site they were soon asking us how to donate. Finding and managing volunteers One of the members of the committee volunteered to be the volunteer coordinator. She knew how and where to get people (this included a local volunteer web-site that we were able to post on and advertise to high school students). Boxes or bags? We decided to use cloth bags instead of boxes to fill as we found the bags a little less cumbersome for the people to carry, and we didn’t have the facilities to wash boxes. Thus, everyone receives 4 bags. The bags have their names on them and everyone is required to drop off 2 empty bags each time they leave with 2 full bags. Additional bags cost extra. What I learned? I learned that there is nothing a committed group of citizens can’t accomplish.

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The Evolution of the Good Food Box

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The origins of the Good Food Box program

Mary Lou had worked in many sectors of the food industry-from running her own market garden, to food wholesaling and co-founding the successful Toronto worker co-op natural food store, The Big Carrot. Ursula’s background was in the community sector as an anti-poverty and food access activist. The TFPC hired both of them for the direct farm to consumer project, bringing together their business, community development and alternative food systems knowledge. With money from their budget and from a United Church project, the two women carried out a detailed feasibility study, involving discussions with community agencies, potential customers of the project and Ontario farm organizations. Mary Lou and Ursula read notes from a trip that Rod MacRae and several other public health colleagues had taken to Sao Paulo, Brazil, the year earlier. The PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores or The Workers’ Party of Brazil), then in power at the municipal level in Sao Paulo, had implemented a wide range of innovative subsidized food programs including Sacalao markets, which provided high quality produce at half their retail cost in low-income neighbourhoods. The Brazilian model influenced the Field to Table travelling food truck that was at the centre of Mary Lou and Ursula’s feasibility study. The Evolution of the Good Food Box

The Evolution of the Good Food Box

In 1991, the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) hired Mary Lou Morgan and Ursula Lipski to carry out a feasibility study to develop a project that would bring together farmers and inner city dwellers. The Toronto Food Policy Council is a citizen sub-committee of the Toronto Board of Health, made up of representatives from different sectors, including farmers, anti-hunger activists and representatives from the food industry. They believed that there were flaws in the way that the local food system connected city buyers with rural farmers. The complex nature of the economic relationship meant that low-income people in the city could go hungry while food rotted in the fields. There was also a huge gap in understanding between the farmer and the city-dweller. The average citizen in downtown Toronto had little idea what foods were in season or whether or not there had been a flood or drought. They were also unaware of the type of pressures being exerted on Canadian farmers, including the globalization of agriculture, corporate concentration and suburban land-use patterns. Many farmers were deeply moved by urban hunger and wanted to do something about it. The idea of more direct farm to consumer marketing, which later became known as Field to Table, was first conceived by Nan Hudson and farmers Jeff Wilson, and Terry Daynard. They wanted to create a practical way of helping solve some of the problems faced by farmers and low-income people with inadequate food access.

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7

The feasibility study showed that Field to Table was a viable option. Given the TFPC’s catalytic and facilitating role in project development, it made sense for a community agency to take on the role of overseeing day-to-day implementation. The FoodShare Board invited the Field to Table project to operate under the auspices of FoodShare, and following extensive discussion of the structure of such an arrangement, FoodShare took over day-to-day operations, with an advisory committee chaired by a TFPC member to provide overall direction. FoodShare participated in setting the direction of the project, paid the two salaries and offered the necessary infrastructure of office and accounting. At about the same time, Debbie Field became the Executive Director of FoodShare Toronto. Debbie had a background in community activism, as well as a history in municipal politics. Her political connections have subsequently helped FoodShare to obtain valuable political and in-kind support from the City of Toronto.

Poverty, emergency relief and the search for alternatives FoodShare had originally been set up by former Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton in 1985 as a response to the recession of the early 1980’s and the resulting rise in food bank use. The mandate had initially been “to end hunger in Metro Toronto” and activities centered on solving the hunger crisis through advocacy for better welfare rates and a higher minimum wage. The volunteer-run Hunger Hotline, a food bank referral service, was set up to dispense emergency food advice. But as time went on and food banks became a fixture, there was a realization that social justice would not be achieved quickly enough to deal with the problem of hunger. Lack of income might be the most important factor in causing hunger, but it was not the single cause of food insecurity. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, FoodShare began to develop programs based on the long term food security model rather than on the emergency food relief model. There were community kitchens, community gardens and buying clubs, all modeled on similar programs in the developing world and geared toward ensuring that people had dignified access to healthy food at all times. These projects looked to long-term solutions, but their impact on people’s short-term household food security was limited. The major difficulty was getting large numbers of people to buy into the challenging notion of collective action. When the Field to Table project began, the FoodShare board and staff saw the project as a direct and practical way to help improve individual families’ short-term household food security problems, while also working on the longer-term goal of building a healthier, people-based food system. It is not the belief or intention of FoodShare that progressive food programs can replace emergency aid programs in the short term (or at least, not without a massive

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infusion of community and institutional support); nor can they replace welfare reform or the need for a more equitable socioeconomic system. So FoodShare has continued to maintain the Hunger Hotline (now called FoodLink) and to work on advocacy through alliances with organizations that work towards eradicating poverty.

Markets, buying clubs – and a new idea The first produce distribution project established by FoodShare and the Field to Table project was a travelling community market. Mary Lou and Ursula ran 20 markets per week out of a truck, all in low-income neighbourhoods, many in the parking lots of social housing buildings in the northern parts of Toronto, where food access was a problem and grocery stores were few and far between. In the winter some of the host buildings asked that staff create a market in the lobby of the low-income building. We also supplied pre-order buying clubs and school food programs with fresh fruit and vegetables. The flaws in the market and buying clubs projects soon became apparent. The community markets were very labour intensive, expensive to run and as a result, difficult to offer on any large scale. The buying clubs also required a lot of labour, in this case from the volunteers who ran them. They had to put together complicated orders, divide up cases between participants, organize pre-payment and worry whether participants were actually saving money, compared to buying “specials” at the supermarket. Buyers would sometimes be shocked to discover that the bananas they had bought through their buying club turned out to be more expensive than those offered at their local supermarket. What participants learned is that grocery stores use “loss leaders” (below cost prices) on fresh produce, to lure in customers. Another problem with the buying clubs was that cases were only sold in full, and often this was more than a community could use or afford. FoodShare staff became committed to evaluating the impact that the project was having on the community. They soon began to feel frustrated at the limitations they were discovering. But their experience with markets and buying clubs had given them the benefit of learning firsthand about some of the ways in which poverty affects food security. FoodShare observed the cycle of dwindling funds and food from midmonth to month-end for people on welfare; and the demoralization caused by having to rely on food banks. For low-income people, food was often not a source of pleasure and comfort, but of worry and stress. In the meantime, staff had heard about a California-based program called “Share”, which was running in 22 states and serving over 11 million low-income people. They began to consider the possibilities this model suggested. Share would help new towns and cities set up a “franchise” of their program. The disadvantages of becoming a franchisee to Share were that groups had to buy all produce through them (i.e. mostly

The Evolution of the Good Food Box

73

U.S. grown produce) and they took a dollar per box themselves to cover overhead costs. The selection of the food in the box was also based on an attempt to provide the materials for whole meals, and often included meat and processed foods. FoodShare decided to make some changes in the operation of the travelling food truck. They would focus on local, fresh and unprocessed foods for both nutrition and environmental reasons and also because meat is more expensive in Canada and requires strict temperature control. They would call their program the “Good Food Box”. In February of 1994, the first 40 Good Food Boxes were packed by staff in the boardroom of FoodShare. It took an entire day to assemble the boxes! As the project has grown, observation, experience and formal evaluation have contributed to the evolution of some fundamental principles on which the Good Food Box is based. Yet the basic system remains: people pre-pay between $12 and $32 to their coordinator and then one week later receive a box of fresh fruit and vegetables at a lower price than if they were to purchase them at the supermarket. The box is delivered to prearranged community drop-off points. Volunteers, who live within the community, receive the produce at these drop-off points, and also co-ordinate money collection and organize the orders.

The Good Food Box helps other FoodShare programs grow The Good Food Box has also developed a number of spin-off projects, including the Focus on Food Youth program, the Fresh Produce program for schools and agencies, Field to Table Catering, the Toronto Kitchen Incubator, and most recently the Good Food Markets, which are a version of the previous produce markets that operated in the early years of the Field to Table project. Today in 2008, as we publish this second edition of the Good Food Box Guide, annual sales of the Fresh Produce program for schools and agencies amount to over $500,000 a year, almost the same annual sales of the Good Food Box. There are now eleven Good Food Markets operating, often in the same communities where the Field to Table travelling truck sold produce 16 years ago. In 2007, sales from Good Food Markets were over $60,000, up from $20,000 in 2006. Having a warehouse, experienced dedicated staff, relationships with farmers, and an account at the Ontario Food Terminal allows FoodShare to develop a variety of produce distribution options of which the Good Food Box is one. FoodShare’s goals remain the same: to improve access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate and sustainable food. We have a variety of programs that all work toward this goal using a variety of distribution mechanisms.

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FoodShare Programs 2008: Student Programs

FoodShare has been addressing the issues of Student Nutrition for a number of years. We believe that food education and access are critical to the health of all children and youth and support this in the following ways:

Field to Table Schools

FoodShare believes that all children and youth should learn to grow and cook healthy food. Through the Field to Table Schools program the food system is brought to life with hands on activities and workshops. Students from JK to Grade 12 learn about composting, school food gardens, nutrition, basic cooking skills, local and global food systems and more. Teachers can arrange in-class presentations, access resources and activity ideas through monthly teacher training workshops or book a field trip to the FoodShare Centre. When booking a field trip to FoodShare, teachers can choose from a menu of activities rooted in the curriculum and workshops, ensuring an appropriate and meaningful experience. The Learning Centre provides students and teachers with hands on training in our kitchen, compost operation, Good Food Box warehouse and urban agriculture program while acquainting them with the behind the scenes activity of one of North America’s largest food security organizations. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 240

Student Nutrition Programs

FoodShare works with the Toronto Partners for Student Nutrition to support over 500 local Student Nutrition Programs. FoodShare helps to ensure that 84,000 children and youth in the City of Toronto have access to healthy, culturally appropriate breakfast, snacks and lunches in their school or local community site. We believe that all children and youth require healthy food to maintain sound bodies and alert minds. Universal Student Nutrition Programs allow children access to healthy foods, help to develop life-long healthy eating patterns and reduce the incidence of social isolation within a community. FoodShare assists parents and volunteers running these programs by building community capacity through workshops and training sessions giving them the tools to achieve long-term sustainability for the programs. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 230

Fresh Produce program

The Fresh Produce program helps to make produce affordable and accessible for student nutrition programs in Toronto’s elementary and secondary schools. Although

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75

FoodShare feels it is always best to purchase from a local provider for high quality, local produce (like a farmers’ market) this is not always possible as a school’s need may be too large and transportation is often a challenge. Through the Fresh Produce Program FoodShare can order produce directly from local farmers and from the Ontario Food Terminal and distribute this produce to schools all over the city. Our knowledgeable staff work directly with organizers to determine the best products that will ensure their programs can run efficiently and successfully. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 242

Community Food Programs

“Good Healthy Food for All” is vital to a community’s well being. No matter what socio-economic status, background, or means, we believe that all individuals and families should have access to healthy food though purchasing and/or developing their own sustainable means.

The Good Food Box program

The Good Food Box is an alternative distribution system that makes sustainable, local, and affordable produce more accessible to Toronto’s communities. Professional evaluation of the Good Food Box shows that participating in the program helps people access a more nutritious diet. The Good Food Box makes top-quality, fresh food available in a respectful and dignified way, fosters community development and promotes healthy eating. Customers pay the cost of the food itself, while distribution overheads are subsidized. For example, our family sized Good Food Box, priced at $17, saves our customers $5-$10 off the retail cost of quality produce. The cost saving comes from purchasing large quantities of produce from wholesalers, directly from farmers, by using dedicated volunteers to help pack boxes and coordinate drop-off locations and by subsidizing the cost of the Good Food Box. Supporting local and sustainable agriculture is also an important consideration for the contents of our boxes. In 2007, our boxes contained between 20-90% local produce, depending on the season. We also support local organic farmers by offering organic boxes. Thanks to our dedicated team of volunteers and staff we are currently distributing about 4000 boxes per month to about 200 neighbourhood-based dropoffs. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 234

Community Gardening and Urban Agriculture

Growing food in urban centres is an idea whose time has come. FoodShare has several programs to support individuals and groups to grow food in the city.

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FoodShare works with community groups to assist them in acquiring the knowledge, expertise and resources necessary to start up a community garden. Toronto now has approximately 120 community gardens located everywhere from city parks to abandoned lots. In these garden plots gardeners grow food for their families, beautify their neighbourhoods and get in touch with nature’s cycles. FoodShare has a sprouting operation and beehives, using appropriate technology methods and recycled materials to produce organic food and seedlings for sale. This program also allows us to teach others about sustainable food growing methods. In 2008 we built on-site demonstration gardens and a new greenhouse producing organic seedlings and sprouts. Off-site, FoodShare partners with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to run The Sunshine Garden, a market garden at the CAMH Queen Street site. Twice weekly, from mid-June to October, we sell just-harvested vegetables at our farm stand. In the winter, we produce over 200 kilograms of edible pea and sunflower sprouts in the greenhouse at the Queen Street Site that are distributed to Good Food Box customers. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 248

Toronto Community Food Animators

The Animators project engages individuals and communities in bringing to life food-focused projects, such as community gardens, fresh produce markets and community kitchens. The project is a partnership between The Stop Community Food Centre, the Afri-Can FoodBasket, and FoodShare, the project leader. Food Animators work closely with local leaders and community agencies in Toronto’s low-income, high priority neighbourhoods such as in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke. In the three years that the Animators have been engaging community residents, there have been over twenty-one projects initiated, with forty local partners. We are working together to build local food security, increase leadership and capacity of individuals and communities and create vibrant public spaces. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 225

Good Food Markets

Neighbourhood based Good Food Markets are one-stand outdoor markets that sell high-quality and affordable fruits and vegetables. They are located in areas of the city where farmers’ markets are not yet profitable, but are desperately needed to improve food access. These market stands not only improve food access and support local farmers, but they also have the potential to create vibrant community spaces. FoodShare works in partnership with community organizations to run the markets. We purchase fresh produce from local farmers and from the Ontario Food Ter-

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77

minal and deliver it to community organizations who run the markets. The markets feature seasonal and local produce in order to offer the greatest quality and value to communities. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 223

Community Education and Information Resources

Education is vital to our ability to take responsibilities for our well-being and our family’s well-being. The education and information resource projects help community members access resources and services designed to improve their physical, mental, and financial health well into the future.

Healthy Babies Eat Homecooked Food

Making your own baby food is easy and affordable. The best thing is that you know exactly what’s in it! FoodShare maintains a team of peer trainers who speak a variety of languages and who go out to community groups to teach Baby Food Basics. Topics covered include how to prepare and store your own baby food, when to introduce various foods and the basics of baby nutrition. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 246

FoodLink Hotline

FoodLink, a partnership with Community Information Toronto (CIT), answers calls from people looking for food programs in Toronto. Referencing a database of over 1,400 records, CIT counselors and FoodLink volunteers can refer to the full spectrum of food programs, from emergency food programs such as food banks and low-cost meals to community development programs such as community gardens, seniors congregate dining and peri-natal programs. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 229

Focus on Food Youth Intern Project

Focus on Food is a program for youth, between the ages of 15 to 30, who are facing barriers to employment. This program supports the participants to gain the job and life skills necessary for them to make the transition to school or work.

Participating youth are paid an hourly wage to work in several of FoodShare’s programs: the Good Food Box program, Field to Table catering, Administration services and the urban agriculture program. The participants are also taught skills in finance, computers, nutrition, diversity and conflict-resolution which they can carry with them into their professional and personal lives. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 224

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Field to Table Catering

Field to Table Catering offers an eclectic menu of fresh, affordable and seasonal foods for sale to community organizations and others seeking catering for events of any size. Revenues generated from sales support the delivery of nutritious soups and meals to organizations serving the homeless and under-housed, as well as cooking training aimed at youth participating in FoodShare projects and people living in supportive housing. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 232

Toronto Kitchen Incubator

The Toronto Kitchen Incubator is a fully equipped industrial kitchen made available for use by entrepreneurs, small businesses and community groups. Started with funding from the Toronto Economic Development Corporation, TKI is available for a low hourly rate to members who would otherwise have to make a large investment in their own facilities. As businesses grow, they move on and make space for others to move in. [email protected] / 416-363-6441 ext. 233

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Appendices • Good Food Box Coordinator Package...........................................................81 • Sample Ordering Spreadsheet...................................................................... 84 • Frequently Asked Questions. ....................................................................... 85 • Produce Buying Policy..................................................................................87 • Good Food Box Order Form. ...................................................................... 89 • Produce Storage Guidelines......................................................................... 90 • Good Food Box Sales Figures.......................................................................91 • Local Produce Statistics. ...............................................................................93 • Good Food Box Yearly Sales Trends..............................................................97 • Good Food Box Newsletter........................................................................101 • Good Food Box Flyer.................................................................................105 • Annual Good Food Box Farmers Meeting Flyer...........................................107

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APPENDIX:

Information for Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators Thank you for inquiring about becoming a Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinator. With requests for Good Food Boxes sky-rocketing, we need people like you to host drop-off sites in Toronto. The Good Food Box program is an alternative food distribution system. Information about the program and becoming a coordinator is included here in your Coordinator Start-Up Kit. It contains: • • • • •

FoodShare Flyers A Coordinator’s Customer Master List Good Food Box Order Forms FoodShare’s Program Overview Contact information

The Good Food Box Program

The Good Food Box program is a community-based food distribution system. We buy food at wholesale prices directly from local farmers and the Ontario Food Terminal and our customers pre-order the box with their local drop-off coordinator. Volunteers pack the produce into individual boxes, and the boxes are then delivered through a neighborhood drop-off system. The principles behind the program include: • health promotion and food skills education • supporting local farmers and economy • making the program accessible to anyone without restrictions • selling only high quality produce • promoting seasonal buying and eating • community development and volunteer support and development • environmentally responsible management of our food program. Although we are a non-profit organization, the Good Food Box is not free. Customers pay for their produce thereby allowing them the power to control their own food needs. It is a universal program in which anyone is welcome to purchase a box.

Coordinator Responsibilities

As Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinator you: • keep a customer master list that includes name, mailing address, phone number and forward a copy to FoodShare (first receiving consent from your customers); • establish guidelines for your group;

Information for Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators

81

• Group order and payment – collect cash or cheques from your customers, place your group’s order, and forward the payment to FoodShare; .• Pick-up – determine a delivery time with FoodShare, receive the boxes at a pre-arranged location, manage customer pick-up, store empty containers, and ensure empty boxes are returned to FoodShare.

Deliveries

The Good Food Box is delivered on a weekly basis, but as the Coordinator, you will determine how often you would like to receive deliveries. Most groups order every two weeks, although there are some that order weekly and others who order once a month. To start your own group, you must order a minimum of 5 Good Food Boxes per delivery. If you order 10 or more boxes at a time, you receive a complimentary Good Food Box for your added efforts.

Good Food Box Types

FoodShare offers 6 different types of produce boxes. We are delighted to bring you: Type of Box

Description

Price

Large Good Food Box (conven- -contains conventional produce tional) -size suitable for families

$17.00

Small Good Food Box

-contains conventional produce -suitable for 1-2 people

$12.00

Large Organic Good Food Box

-contains certified organic produce -size suitable for families

$32.00

Small Organic Good Food Box

-contains certified organic produce -suitable for 1-2 people

$22.00

Wellness Box

-contains conventional produce - pre-cut and washed

$12.00

Fruit Basket

-contains only fruit (conventional)

$12.00

The contents of the Good Food Box are selected based on various principles: nutrition, value, affordability, cultural-appropriateness, and whether they local, seasonal and organic. Whenever possible, we buy from Ontario farmers to support the local economy and the contents of the box change each week. Below is a sample list of what you might receive in a box. The contents of the Good Food Box are selected based on various principles: nutrition value, affordability, cultural-appropriateness, local, seasonal and organic. Whenever possible, we buy from Ontario farmers to support the local economy and the contents of the box change each week. Below is a sample list of what you might receive in a box.

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APPENDIX:

Information for Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators

Contents for the various Good Food Boxes: week of September 4-7, 2007 * Ontario Grown Large Good Food Box





Fruit Basket

Wellness

Large Organic

Small Organic

2 green peppers * 1 green pepper*

3lb bag pears*

1 green pepper*

1 red pepper*

1 red pepper*

4 lbs white potatoes*

2 lbs white potatoes*

1 bunch bananas

4 white potatoes*

2 green peppers*

1 green pepper*

1 red pepper*

1 red pepper*

1 cantaloupe*

2 red peppers*

½ lb sweet colour 1/4 lb sweet pepper* colour pepper*

3lb bag of apples*

1.5lb bag of apples*

3lb bag apples*

4 bananas*

1 green zucchini*

1 spanish onion*

1 head romaine lettuce*

1 head romaine lettuce*

1 basket peaches*

1 pint mushrooms*

1 spanish onion*

1 bunch beets*

2lb bag onions*

2lb bag onions*

2 mangoes

2 yellow onions*

1 bunch beets*

1 bulb garlic*

1 bunch broccoli*

1 bunch broccoli*

1 pint strawberries

2 bulbs garlic*

1 bunch basil*

3lb bag pears*

1.5lb bag pears*

4 apples*

1 bunch basil*

1 bunch parsley*

1 bulb organic garlic*

1 bunch bananas

1 bag cut carrots* 1 bunch parsley*

2 tomatoes*

1 bunch bananas

½ basket peaches*

0.33 lbs spring salad mix

3 tomatoes*

1 Sugar Baby melon*

½ basket peaches*

½ basket field tomatoes*

1 bag cut celery*

1 Sugar Baby melon*

1.5 lbs apples*

1 pint cherry tomatoes*

3 lbs apples*

2lbs red potatoes*

1 bag cut broccoli*

3lbs red Potatoes*

½ basket field tomatoes*

Small Good Food Box



1 bunch bananas*

If you need help recruiting customers, we would be happy to give a Good Food Box presentation. Why not be a part of a wonderful movement to ensure food access for all? Call Delsie Hyatt at 416-363-6441 ext. 234 to start your Good Food Box group today!

Information for Good Food Box Drop-off Coordinators

83

84

$7.75

$22.75

$2.50

$1.75

$1.45

$20.75

$9.75

$3.50

$11.75

$14.75

$12.75

$13.75

25

25

10

1

1

6

4

1

24

18

24

18

# in case Case Cost

The Good Food Box Equ

LARGE

SUM(H4:H18)

4.72

9.44

$0.76

$0.53

$0.82

$0.49

$0.00

$1.22

$1.73

$0.73

$0.88

$0.50

$0.91

$0.31

Cost in box Order

$9.07 Actual $8.64 goal

$12.08 Actual $12.24 Target

24% Margin

$0.10 packaging

SUM(T15U15)

13.89

10.42

13.89

6.92

20.06

31.25

20.83

184.00

184.00

71.60

ORDER

14.00

11.00

14.00

7.00

21.00

32.00

21.00

184.00

184.00

72.00

10.00

14.00

SUM(I15+M15+N15+O15+P15+Q15+R15+S15)

7.33 13.89

5.50 10.42

7.33 13.89

5.50 10.42 3.50

0.00 20.06

16.50 31.25

11.00 20.83

66.00 184.00

66.00 184.00

26.40 73.60 2.00

9.50

13.22

invento ry Select

5.28 10.00 0.50

$0.10 packaging

29% margin

Sub Total

5.28 14.72 1.50

$0.00 box wash

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

0.00

0.50

0.50

0.50

0.50

2.00

1.00

1.00

Amt in box

$0.10 newsletter

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

132

# to pack

SUM(F15*G15)/A $0.00 box wash 15

6.56

4.92

6.56

4.92

20.06

14.75

9.83

118.00

118.00

47.20

Order

SMALL

$0.10 newsletter

$0.76

$0.53

$0.82

$0.49

$0.60

$1.22

$1.73

$1.45

$1.75

$1.00

$0.91

$0.62

Cost in box

=SUM(17-H19)/17

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

0.17

0.50

0.50

1.00

1.00

4.00

1.00

2.00

SUM(E15*G15)

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

118

=SUM(17*0.72)

$0.76

$0.53

$0.82

$0.49

$3.50

$2.44

$3.46

$1.45

$1.75

$0.25

$0.91

$0.31

Amt in Unit Cost # to pack box

SUM(B15/A15)

Bananas

Romaine Lettuce

Broccoli

Onion

Garlic Organic

Tomatoes Local4/3

Peaches 6/3

Apples

Pears Barlette

Potatoes

Red Pepper

Green Pepper

Item

4-Sep-07

Sample Ordering Spreadsheet:

Cal

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

ON

Source

conventional produce unless marked

GOOD FOOD BOX conventional produce

APPENDIX: week of September 4-7, 2007

APPENDIX:

Frequently Asked Questions Customer questions Can I choose what I want in my box? The boxes are not customized and most customers like it this way. We get a lot of comments like “the boxes are like Christmas presents, each box is a surprise.” Because FoodShare decides what to put in the boxes, we are able to reduce the overall cost of our boxes, maximize freshness, and support local and sustainable agriculture. Our boxes also help to educate people about the different kinds of fruits and vegetables available by including newsletters with recipes and information about how to use the produce.

If there is a food recall, what do you do? Our immediate response to a food recall, issued from the Canadian Food Inspection agency, is to determine the exact item being recalled. We will identify the brand, the variety, and the size, and then compare this with the produce we obtained. If we identify that we have purchased the recalled item, all possible customers must be called immediately with information on the risks and handling procedures outlined by the Canadian Food Inspection agency. Even if we do not find any recalled item(s), contacting the customers to let them know that the products they received were not recalled will help alleviate their worries.

Is the produce fresh? Or is it seconds? Produce is of the highest quality. We do not put seconds into our boxes.

Do I have to order a box every week? No. You can order as frequently as suits you, with a maximum of once a week.

Coordinator questions Is the program just for low-income individuals? FoodShare believes that everyone could eat better. We also believe that a universal program encourages more people to participate because it does not discriminate. We do, however, target communities that have the greatest barriers to accessing good healthy produce. We target these communities by offering presentations and promotional materials to their local agencies.

Frequently Asked Questions

85

Do you deliver on the week-ends? Our delivery hours are from Tuesday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Do you deliver out of the Metro Toronto area? At Present we have two stops in Mississauga and two in Pickering. This is the farthest East and West of the city we are able to go. We also do not go north of Steeles Avenue. Stops outside of the Metro Toronto area must be cost effective for us to deliver. Groups must order a sufficient number of boxes to make the cost of transportation worthwhile.

How much work is it to be a coordinator? Do I get anything for volunteering? Typically a coordinator spends about 3-4 hrs each delivery week (some coordinators have boxes delivered weekly, some biweekly, and some once a month). A coordinator is responsible for finding customers, reminding customers to order and pick-up their box, providing a time and place for customers to pick up their box, and collecting payments from customers. For every ten boxes ordered, a coordinator will receive a free large box or a produce credit worth $17.

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APPENDIX:

Produce Buying Policy (Good Food Box Toronto) 1. Quality

a. Great taste b. Acceptable size, good presentation, no deterioration of product (mold, soft spots, rotting) c. Used within appropriate shelf life

2. Safety and Sanitation a. b. c. d.

Clean boxes and lids (box washers are shown how to wash and put the clean boxes on the floor) Proper packaging and cutting All produce has to be on skids (no fruit or vegetable boxes on the floor) Trained volunteers and staff

3. Good Value

a. Feeling of abundance, weight, colour b. Practical for making supper c. Favourable price comparison with the marketplace

4. Variety a. b. c. d. e.

Staple foods (e.g. potatoes, carrots, onions, apples) Something new or different to push the food experience Luxury items (that people would not buy themselves) Salad items A selection of fruits (minimum three varieties/box)

5. Suitability

a. Items in Wellness Box should reflect participants’ dietary needs (i.e. four cut items, small servings, limited citrus, a maximum of 40 serving per week) b. Items in Toronto Healthy Diet Study Box should reflect participants’ dietary needs (e.g. berries, dark green vegetables, okra, eggplants, fruits and vegetables low in Glycemic Index; no potatoes or bananas)

6. Purchase local produce

a. Support local supply and distribution networks—purchase as much as possible as close to home as possible—Ontario first, then Canada b. Work with farmers to grow products for us

7. Seasonal

a. Feature in-season produce b. Think about the whole year and how to avoid purchasing out to season (i.e. only buy Ontario asparagus; and try to buy cranberries from Canada)

Produce Buying Policy (Good Food Box Toronto)

87

8. Education

a. Newsletters b. Recipes c. Content sheet with local produce marked with an asterisk, also noting different varieties d. Farmer information

9. Growing Practices a. b. c. d. e. f.

Certified organic/growing organically for organic boxes Transitional and conventional accepted for other boxes Encourage Integrated Pest Management, avoidance of pesticides, fungicides, etc. Discourage genetically modified seeds No waxed produce Encourage heritage varieties

10. Packing a. b. c. d. e. f.

Products must be presentable (bunched, bagged and clean) Product-particular boxes should be used (waxed, unwaxed, suitable depth) If possible, avoid individualized stickers Product labeling must be culturally sensitive to our customers (e.g. blood oranges) If possible, purchase in bulk returnable bins to avoid cardboard packaging If repackaging, use paper or plastic bags depending on product

11. Fair Trade

a. Fair wage policies b. Environmentally sensitive practices

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The Good Food Box

APPENDIX:

Good Food Box Order Form

Good Food Box Order Form

89

APPENDIX:

Produce Storage Guidelines Table 1. Fruits & Vegetables that require cold, moist conditions Vegetable

Temperature (oF)

Relative Humidity (%)

Length of Storage

Asparagus Apples Beets Broccoli Brussels Sprouts Cabbage, Early Cabbage, Late Cabbage, Chinese Carrots, mature Carrots, immature Cauliflower Celeriac Celery Collards Corn, sweet Endive, Escarole Grapes Kale Leeks, green Lettuce Parsley Parsnips Pears Peas, green Potatoes, early Potatoes, late Radishes, spring Radishes, winter Rhubarb Rutabagas Spinach

32-36 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 50 39 32 32 32 32 32

95 90 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 90 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 90 90 95 95 95 95 95

2-3 weeks 2-6 months 3-5 months 10-14 days 3-5 weeks 3-6 weeks 3-4 months 1-2 months 4-5 months 4-6 weeks 2-4 weeks 3-4 months 2-3 months 10-14 days 4-8 days 2-3 weeks 4-6 weeks 10-14 days 1-3 months 2-3 weeks 1-2 months 2-6 months 2-7 months 1-3 weeks 1-3 weeks 4-9 months 3-4 weeks 2-4 months 2-4 weeks 2-4 months 10-14 days

Table 2. Vegetables that require cool, moist conditions Vegetable

Temperature (oF)

Relative Humidity (%)

Length of Storage

Beans, snap Cucumbers Eggplant Cantaloupe Watermelon Peppers, sweet Potatoes, early Potatoes, late Tomatoes, green Tomatoes, ripe

40-50 45-50 45-50 40 40-50 45-50 50 40 50-70 45-50

95 95 90 90 80-85 95 90 90 90 90

7-10 days 10-14 days 1 week 15 days 2-3 weeks 2-3 weeks 1-3 weeks 4-9 months 1-3 weeks 4-7 days

Table 3. Vegetables that require cool dry conditions. Vegetable

Temperature (oF)

Relative Humidity (%)

Length of Storage

Garlic Onions

32 32

65-70 65-70

6-7 months 6-7 months

Table 4. Vegetables that require warm dry conditions. Vegetable

Temperature (oF)

Relative Humidity (%)

Length of Storage

Peppers, hot Pumpkins Squash, winter Sweet Potato

50 50-55 50-55 55-60

60-65 70-75 50-60 80-85

6 months 2-3 months 2-6 months 4-6 months

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The Good Food Box

APPENDIX:

Good Food Box Sales Figures Good Food Box Sales by box 2007 1200

1000

Boxes

800

600

400

200

Ja

n Ja 1 n 1 Ja 4 n 2 Fe 8 b 12 M ar M 2 ar 1 M 2 ar 26 Ap r Ap 9 r2 M 3 ay M 7 ay 2 Ju 1 ne Ju 4 ne 18 Ju ly Ju 2 ly 1 Ju 6 ly 3 Au 0 g 1 Au 3 g Se 27 pt Se 10 pt 24 O ct O 8 ct 22 N ov N 5 ov 19 D ec D 3 ec 17

0 Date

Good Food Box

Small box

Good Food Box Sales Figures

Small organic box

Large organic

fruit

wellness

91

Average increase in sales by box 2003-2007 $140,000.00

$120,000.00

$100,000.00

$80,000.00

$60,000.00

$40,000.00

$20,000.00

$Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

Wellness

Total sales

$(20,000.00)

92

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

Wellness

Total sales

The Good Food Box

APPENDIX:

Local Produce Statistics Local vs Imported produce sales 2006

Imported organic 7%

Local conventional

34%

39% Imported conventional

8%

12%

Local conventional direct sale

Local organic direct sale

Local Produce Statistics

93

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The Good Food Box

$-

$5,000.00

$10,000.00

$15,000.00

$20,000.00

$25,000.00

$30,000.00

$35,000.00

$40,000.00

$45,000.00

Andrews Scenic Acres

Weninger Farmers

Lincoln Line Orchards

Local conventional direct farm sales 2006

Norfolk Fruit Growers

Local Produce Statistics

95

$-

e

il af ar

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s s s s s s c s c c y n d e c. s. In In In ro rd Lt od In uc an rm rm rm de rm ro a r B s s o e s d p a a a a B s h a d c n o F F F F F tt m m h rc G K rm om tti e an Pr of du de ar ts Sc ar ls re yk ce O s r a c e f C t o n o F e F h c i k n r a u F m P it v e o n rn d tt t P as W ee G Vi Bo m ills .E tti et Pr ro uc n Ke w n he Ba nn Fe e t H F d C P .S o r e h r i P o s o y o D v n Jo S. N Pr lle er aw Ko do v a h i w e V S R ie al C dv a o Br

$5,000.00

$10,000.00

$15,000.00

$20,000.00

$25,000.00

$30,000.00

Local Sales from farms through terminal 2006

96

The Good Food Box

$-

n

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$10,000.00

$20,000.00

$30,000.00

$40,000.00

$50,000.00

$60,000.00

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Local organic direct farm sales 2006

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APPENDIX:

Good Food Box Yearly Sales Trends Produce sales $1,400,000.00

$1,200,000.00

$1,000,000.00

$800,000.00

$600,000.00

$400,000.00

$200,000.00

sa

le

s

s To ta l

es ln W el

Pa

re

nt

in

g

D SB TH

t ke M ar

er th O

ol ho Sc

G

oo

d

Fo

od

sa

Bo

le

x

s

$-

2003 actual

2004 actual

2006 actual

projected 2007

Good Food Box Sales Trends

2005 actual

97

2003 Actual Produce Sales 1% 1% 0% 0% 7%

25%

66%

2004 Actual Produce Sales 1% 1% 0% 0% 6%

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting 32%

Wellness

60%

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

Wellness

98

The Good Food Box

2005 Actual Produce Sales 1% 1% 0% 1% 10%

51%

36%

2006 Actual Produce Sales 0% 2% 2%

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

2%

9%

Wellness

51%

34%

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

Wellness

Good Food Box Sales Trends

99

Projected 2007 Produce Sales

2% 4%

0%

3%

9%

42%

40%

Good Food Box

School sales

Other

Market

THDSB

Parenting

Wellness

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The Good Food Box

APPENDIX:

Good Food Box Newsletter The bi-weekly newsletter of FoodShare Toronto’s

Good Food Box

Vol.11

No. 17 weeks of August 21 and 28, 2007

Good Food NEWS

working with communities to improve access to affordable and healthy food - from field to table

At the Mercy of Mother Nature: a story about the gambles of farming by Mark-Jan Daalderop When I spoke with one of our farmers on the phone recently, he sadly told me that they had not received rain in 5 weeks. I remember my own experience of drought and felt sympathy for all the farmers who face such uncertainty each and every day. Here is my story. Two years ago I stood in a field of a small farm in Southern Ontario with a garden hose in my hand. I was trying to save a row of cabbages that were hanging limp and desperate for even a drop of water. My body was tired from the constant pounding of the afternoon sun and my throat burned from the dust collected inside. This particular year we were praying for rain, praying each day that the clouds would cover the molten fireball that burned our skin and made the soil so hot it burned our feet. We had not received a drop of rain for more than 5 weeks and with the intensity of the sun our plants were holding on for dear life. The summer of 2004, the year before, had been perfect, just the right mixture of rain and sunshine. The crops thrived and our market and food boxes were bountiful. This year we were already getting complaints from our food box recipients, and the organization was getting upset that we weren’t growing food. The tension in the air was thick making everyone irritable and fearful of the worst: losing our crops and losing our jobs. “This is ridiculous, when is it ever going to rain?” I said frustrated, my friend and coworker responded by saying “ Welcome to the life of a farmer”. At the end of the fifth week of no rain, while watering the tomatoes, the clouds began to form and the sky became dark. We held our breath. This would not be the first time the sky would tease us with the possibility of rain. The plants started to sway in the warm breeze, the light faded, and a sweet smell of a storm filled my senses. A raindrop fell, hitting the dry soil and created

a small crater and dust plume. We all stopped working and stood frozen, trying not to make any motion in fear that the clouds would see us and move on. The rain thundered down in great streams from the sky and created rivers between the rows, creating deep cuts in the fields and flooding in some areas. We were elated, almost to tears of joy. I understood, then, why cultures have celebrated the harvest: because there is no guarantee that it will come. We now rely on the global food system, where droughts, floods, and major crop losses go almost unnoticed, except maybe in the cost of our food. When the dry weather caused a decline in Ontario strawberry production we bought from California…no big deal. This ability to tap into the global food system has in some ways increased our food security yet at the same time has changed the way we value food and celebrate it.

What’s local in your GFB this week and the farmers who grew it: In the conventional boxes:

from a variety of Ontario farmers, through the Ontario Food Terminal: corn, carrots, peaches, field tomatoes, cucumber, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, mushrooms, and potatoes

In the organic boxes:

Pfennings: Corn, Leeks, Eggplant Mike Lanigan: Kale Lena Horst: Garlic Hope Organics: Tomatoes, Orange Honeydew melons, Potatoes

rsel ves! Help us Replant ou

Field to Table Centre

90 Croatia St. Toronto, ON M6H 1K9 t: 416. 363. 6441 xt 221 f: 416. 363 0474 e: [email protected] www.foodshare.net

As of July 31st the Good Food Box is being packed at 90 Croatia St!

Good Food Box Newsletter

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recipes Salsa de Elote Fresh Corn Salsa 4 ears 1/2 med 1 to 2 1 1/2 cup 3 TBS 1 tsp 1/2 tsp

fresh corn, shucked white onion, finely chopped minced fresh chilesserrano or jalapeno ripe tomato, seeded and chopped fresh cilantro, loosely packed & chopped fresh lime juice vegetable or olive oil salt

In a large pot of boiling water, cook the corn until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Cool under running water. With a sharp knife, cut the kernels off the cobs. Place the corn kernels in a large bowl. Mix in the onion, chiles, tomato, cilantro, oil, and lime juice. Season to taste with salt. Serve cold or at room temperature. Makes 3 cups.

Corn Pancakes 1-1/4 cups 1 tsp 1/2 tsp 2 1 cup 2 TBS 2 cups

flour baking powder salt eggs beaten milk vegetable oil whole-kernel corn, cooked & cut off the cob

Sift the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl combine the eggs, milk and oil, then mix together with the dry ingredients. Stir in the corn. Do not overmix. Spoon the batter into a preheated, lightly greased griddle or frying pan. Makes 12 medium pancakes. Serving suggestions: Serve the pancakes with honey or maple syrup. Or: Add savoury herbs such as thyme or parsley, and finely diced red and green peppers to batter then serve pancakes with 1 cup of sour cream or yogurt mixed with a couple of tablespoonfuls of herbs, chipotle or jalapeno peppers & citrus juice

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featured this week: CORN Maize (Zea mays), also known as corn, is a cereal grain that was first domesticated from 7,500 to 12,000 years ago in central Mexico though that plant was very different from what we now know as corn. Perhaps as early as 1500 BC, maize began to spread widely and rapidly and was the staple food, or a major staple, of most the pre-Columbian North American, Mesoamerican, South American, and Caribbean cultures. It spread to the rest of the world after European contact with the Americas in the late 15th century and early 16th century. The ears are actually female flowers and the corn silks are the stigmas --the female plant part that gets pollinated by pollen from the male tassels. For each silk on which pollen from the tassel lands, one kernel of corn is produced. Corn is a good source of many nutrients including thiamin (vitamin B1), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), folate, dietary fiber, vitamin C, phosphorous and manganese. Since heat rapidly converts the sugar in corn to starch, it is very important to keep corn refrigerated as soon as it is picked. Look for corn whose husks are fresh and green and not dried out. They should envelope the ear and not fit too loosely around it. To examine the kernels, pull back part of the husk. The kernels should be plump and tightly arranged in rows. You can test for the juiciness of the corn by taking your fingernail and pressing on a kernel. Corn that is fresh will exude a white milky substance. Store corn in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Do not remove its husk since this will protect its flavor. To enjoy its optimal sweetness, corn should be eaten as soon as possible. Fresh corn freezes well if placed in heavy-duty freezer bags. To prepare whole ears for freezing, blanch them first for seven to eleven minutes depending upon their size (larger ears take a longer time to blanch than smaller ones). If you just want to freeze the kernels, first blanch the ears for about five minutes and then cut the kernels off the cob at about three-quarters of their depths. Whole corn on the cob will keep for up to one year, while the kernels can be frozen for two to three months.

DELIVERIES for the week of: August 28 orders are due 5 pm Tues. August 21 for the week of Sept.4 orders are due 5pm Tues. August 28 tel 416. 363. 6441 ext234 fax 416. 363 0474 e. [email protected]

The bi-weekly newsletter of FoodShare Toronto’s

Good Food Box

Vol. 12 No. 1 week of January 8th 2008

Good Food NEWS

Working with communities to ensure that everyone has access to sustainably produced, good, healthy food

Happy New Year!!

Thank you so much to all of the volunteers, coordinators, farmers, and staff that have made this year a success. In 2007 we helped our communities access healthy fresh produce by packing over 36,000 Good Food Boxes, supplying 85 schools with fresh produce, teaching children about composting, supporting community gardens, kitchens, Good Food Markets and farmers markets in Toronto.

Thank you, also, for being part of a community of people who believe that good food should be a reality for everyone. A community that is growing and becoming powerful enough to create long lasting changes. A community that already is helping local farmers, helping lower the cost of healthy produce, helping feed young minds, helping grow inspiring gardens in urban areas and helping educate our

The Good Food Boxes alone have roughly kept $100,000 in the pockets of our Good Food customers. Our warehouse moved close to 1 million dollars of fresh produce this year and approximately 65% of this was Ontario grown, and 28% of this produce was sourced from organic farms. We also directly purchased produce from over 13 farmers, adding several new farms to our list.

communities about our food system and how they too can participate in making it better. We can never really know exactly how much our actions now will influence life in the future. All we can do is forge ahead on hope that one day we will see the changes we wished for.

Best wishes for a GREAT 2008!

from the GF B Team (Mark-Jan , Zahra, Delsie, Cafeon , Lori, Moorthi, Sherry, Bill , Ed, Rajah,) and all the FoodShare staff. s! ve el rs ou Help us Replant 90 Croatia St. Toronto, ON M6H 1K9 t: 416. 363. 6441 xt 221 f: 416. 363 0474 e: [email protected] www.foodshare.net

Good Food Box Newsletter

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4 cups 1 TBS 1-1/2 cup 1 tsp 2

recipes Arabian Squash Casserole

cooked squash or pumpkin, mashed or pured olive oil chopped onion salt small bell peppers (one red and one green, if possible) minced 4 medium cloves garlic, minced Black pepper and cayenne, to taste 1/2 cup firm yogurt 1 cup crumbled feta cheese Optional: Sunflower seeds and/or minced walnuts, for the top Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place the cooked and mashed or puréed squash in a large bowl. Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized skillet. Add onion, and saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add salt and bell peppers. Saute about 5 minutes, or until the peppers begin to get soft. Add garlic, black pepper, and cayenne, and saute a few more minutes. Add the saute, along with yogurt and feta, to the squash, and mix well. Spread into an ungreased 9-inch square baking pan, sprinkle the top lightly with sunflower seeds and/or minced walnuts. Bake uncovered for 25 to 30 minutes, or until bubbly. Good served with Tabouli Salad or with warmed pita bread and Spinach Salad with ripe tomatoes.

Baked Cider-Maple Squash With Apples 2 1 tsp 2 large 1/4 cup 1/4 cup 1/4 cup

acorn or pepper squash salt cooking apples; unpeeled butter maple syrup apple cider or juice

Cut squash in half and remove seeds. Sprinkle with salt and place cut side down in baking pan. Cover and bake in 375:F oven until almost tender, about 40 minutes. Peel and cut into thick slices or wedges. Cut apples in half, core, and cut into thick slices or wedges. In small baking dish, arrange squash and apples alternately and overlapping slightly. Heat butter with syrup and cider. Pour over squash and apples. Bake for about 20 minutes or until tender, basting often.

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The Good Food Box

featured this week: SQUASH Winter squash, members of the Cucurbitaceae family and relatives of both the melon and the cucumber, come in many different varieties. While each type varies in shape, color, size and flavor, they all share some common characteristics. Their shells are hard and difficult to pierce, enabling them to have long storage periods between one and six months. Their flesh is mildly sweet in flavor and finely grained in texture. Additionally, all have seed-containing hollow inner cavities. Varieties of winter squash include: * Butternut squash: Shaped like a large pear, this squash has cream-colored skin, deep orange-colored flesh and a sweet flavor. * Acorn squash: With harvest green skin speckled with orange patches and pale yellow-orange flesh, this squash has a unique flavor that is a combination of sweet, nutty and peppery. * Hubbard squash: A larger-sized squash that can be dark green, greyblue or orange-red in color, the Hubbard’s flavor is less sweet than many other varieties. * Turban squash: Green in color and either speckled or striped, this winter squash has an orange-yellow flesh whose taste is reminiscent of hazelnuts. * Pumpkins: The pumpkin with the most flesh and sweetest taste is the small sized one known as sugar or pie pumpkin, the latter referring to its most notable culinary usage. Modern day squash developed from the wild squash that originated in an area between Guatemala and Mexico. Christopher Columbus brought squash back to Europe from the New World, and like other native American foods, their cultivation was introduced throughout the world by Portuguese and Spanish explorers. Choose ones that are firm, heavy for their size and have dull, not glossy, rinds. Avoid those with any signs of decay, which manifest as areas that are water-soaked areas or moldy. Winter squash is an excellent source of vitamin A. It is also a very good source of vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber, and manganese. In addition, winter squash is a good source of folate, omega-3 fatty acids, thiamin, copper, vitamin B5, vitamin B6, niacin and copper.

DELIVERIES ORDER BY: - Wed. Jan. 9th for delivery in the week of Jan 14th - Wed. JAN16th for delivery in the week of Jan21st. tel 416. 363. 6441 ext234 fax 416. 363 0474 e. [email protected]

APPENDIX:

good food box flyer

Good Food Box Flyer

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The Good Food Box

Supports Ontario farmers

A way to get connected to your neighborhood

•

•

$12

A week's worth of servings of fruit and vegetables cut up and measured for you with love and care. Suitable for seniors and students.

Wellness Box

$12 Just fruit, with an emphasis on what's at its best and in season at the moment.

The Fruit Basket

$32

Each drop-off has a volunteer co-ordinator who collects money one to two weeks in advance, takes responsibility for the recyclable boxes and makes sure that everyone gets their boxes. If they have ten or more orders at their stop, co-ordinators receive a free box for helping us out.

Mostly local, certified organic produce. Very seasonal, lots of root vegetables in the winter. The higher price of this box reflects the higher production costs that come from producing food organically. A smaller version is available for $22.

A way to bank your money so you can be sure to have food in the house all month long

•

Family-sized selection of affordable fresh fruit and vegetables, with an emphasis on seasonal produce and one or two “interesting” items each delivery. The small version for singles, seniors or small families is $12.

Toronto's largest buying club

•

We buy directly from farmers and from the Ontario Food Terminal. We select only top-quality fruit and vegetables. Volunteers help us pack the food into boxes at our warehouse at 200 Eastern Avenue. Our drivers then deliver the boxes to approximately 200 drop-offs around Metro Toronto.

The Organic Box

Distributed through a network of voluteerrun community drop-offs of ten or more people

•

How does it work?

The Good Food Box $17

A basket brimming with fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to your neighborhood every two weeks

•

The Good Food Box

The value of the $17 box at a regular supermarket ranges between $25 and $27, depending on the store and the time of year.

How much money will I save?

No, everyone gets the same thing. If you don't like an item in your box, one option is to trade it with others at your stop. And we are happy to hear your feedback on the mix of foods in the box at any time. We also include a newsletter which gives you preparation tips and recipes for more unusual items, as well as updates on FoodShare activities, nutritional information and news about food issues.

Can I choose which items I get?

Every delivery the selection of fruits and vegetables in the box changes. Basic items such as potatoes, carrots, onions, apples, oranges and bananas are included in the box most times. We choose the other items according to what is good quality, in-season and affordable at the time. We support Ontario farmers as much as possible.

What is in the Good Food Box?

There are two ways: you can become a volunteer coordinator by starting a drop-off at your apartment building, church, community centre, daycare, etc. if you have 8-10 people who would like to buy a box. OR you can call us and find out if there is a drop-off near you where you can pick up a box.

How do I get involved?

APPENDIX:

annual Good Food Box farmers meeting flyer

FoodShare Annual Farmers meeting “Produce and Policy” Thursday March 6th, 2008, 9am to 3pm FoodShare Toronto, 90 Croatia St. (Dufferin/Bloor) (enter at north west corner of building). Dear Farmer, Thank you for your continued commitment, or interest in FoodShare’s mission of working with communities to improve access to affordable,healthy and local food. This year we hope to partner with your farm or organization to source fresh produce for one of our three programs: The Good Food Box, The Good Food Markets, and The Field to Schools program. We would also like to have a strategic meeting to discuss policy recommendations that would help improve the viability of farming and also improve the overall health of our communities. We also invite you to join us for a prepared lunch. Please RSVP Mark-Jan Daalderop

416-363-6441 ex 223 [email protected] Agenda: 9:00 Coffee/tea/snacks 9:30 Introduction of Attendees 10:00 FoodShare’s projects:Planning and partnering 11:30 Policy presentation by Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare 12:00 Prepared Lunch 1:00 Policy recommendation brainstorm for Municipal, Provincial and Federal governments 2:00 Tour of new Facility 2:30 Big apple crunch activity with 100 grade 3/4 students (chance for students to meet the farmers)

annual Good Food Box farmers meeting Flyer

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