USEFUL INFORMATION
This is a collection of information for those involved in Food Rescue or Distribution. If you have information that can be posted here, please contact us.
Guidelines on Food Pantries, Distribution and Food Safety
VOLUNTEERING
Volunteer Prince William coordinates opportunities to volunteer with the Food Helpline and at the warehouse Monday through Friday. Opportunities to help include unloading pallets of food from trailers, preparing orders for distribution, loading food into Food Rescue Hero’s cars, and packing bags for our backpack program. Most work is done from 8am-12pm. While COVID restrictions are in place, all volunteers are required to wear masks. To learn more or to sign-up to volunteer, visit https://www.volunteerprincewilliam.org/.
FOOD WAREHOUSE
The warehouse and docked refrigerated trailer gives us 21 pallet positions of cold storage and another 60+ pallet positions for non-perishable food items, plus an additional loading dock and drive-up dock for shipping and receiving.
PHASE I
As part of the USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box program, we receive truckloads of produce boxes every day. Food Rescue Heroes and two box trucks help us send out 6,000 produce boxes, 480 cases of milk, fresh vegetables, and non-perishable food boxes every week. As of December, we have redistributed 9 million pounds of food to 78 food distribution sites since April 2020.
PHASE II
While sending out so much produce is great, we recognized that there was still a great need for non-perishable items. Food pantry shelves were being emptied out faster than they could be stocked, families couldn’t afford to buy items they normally could have, and the supply chain was severely crippled leaving grocery store shelves bare and limits on how much could be purchased at a time. All of this contributed to our decision to begin making our own non-perishable food boxes. With the use of $1 million in PWC CARES funding designated for food purchasing, we have been working to buy bulk items to build over 2,300 food boxes every week.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
Didlake opened up an unused warehouse space for us to begin receiving, sorting, and redistributing food supplies as we created the Community Feeding Taskforce. By donating warehouse and office space, they enabled us to start helping those in need while PWC EOC prepared the space we currently occupy.
Sysco donated a 53’ refrigerated trailer from April to June and donated truckloads of perishable food items during that time. Cold storage is a must-have for our success, and their support allowed us to receive and store perishable items for redistribution.
Capital Area Food Bank helped us become a temporary Feeding America partner early on and have helped us secure extra produce, milk, USDA Boxes, and non-perishable food boxes – sometimes for last minute emergencies!
Civil Air Patrol volunteer every other weekend to assist in preparing pallets of food for distribution into our community. Their support has been invaluable as true Weekend Warriors with our program!
Old School Community Kitchen is a pop-up effort headed by Zandra’s in Haymarket. Their team has been taking bulk food donations from us and turning them into individual, packaged meals for several of our distribution sites to give to their clients. They have already provided us with over 31,000 pounds of food – the equivalent of 16,128 meals.
Millers Supplies at Work decided to donate a truck and driver several days a week over a couple of months to help us move large quantities of food more efficiently. Feeling the impact of COVID-19, their company decided to step up and help while business slowed down and moved hundreds of thousands of pounds for us.
St. Lucy’s Project (Catholic Charities) is literally our neighbor and we have been collaborating for several months now, purchasing and delivering food together – particularly for residents in Manassas. We have been able to supply them with produce boxes and cases of milk when they’ve needed more, and they have sent produce trucks our way on multiple occasions as well.
VENDORS
Distributors are companies working with the USDA to package boxes of produce, milk, dairy, and/or meat and then ship it to nonprofit organizations all across the US for last-mile distribution into the trunks of those in need of food. We have been working with some amazing people to coordinate weekly deliveries of produce and bi-weekly deliveries of milk during Round 1 and Round 2 of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) Farmers to Families Food Box (FFFB) distribution. For Rounds 3 and 4, we received USDA food boxes from Produce Source Partners and purchased additional boxes from Capital Seaboard to fill in the gaps.
- Capital Seaboard http://www.capitalseaboard.com/
- Coastal Sunbelt https://www.coastalsunbelt.com/
- De Lune Corp https://www.delunecorp.com/
- Military Produce Group (MPG) https://www.militaryproduce.com/
- Perfect Pact https://www.perfectpact.us/
- Seashore Fruit and Produce http://seashoreeast.com/
- Chelan Fresh https://www.chelanfresh.com/
HUNGRY?
Need food? Call the Helpline – (703) 794-4668
Bilingual volunteers are available Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10am-3pm. They will provide information about getting food from the nearest food distribution site closest to where you live OR setup a no-contact, direct delivery of food to your home. Food Rescue Heroes will complete the delivery using our app. Please Note: these are no-contact deliveries and our Food Rescue Heroes will only drop off the food if COVID-19 safety precautions are being followed.
Find a Distribution Site near you?
Search this map
The map has food locations through the local area. Find one near to you, then click on it to open more information and how to contact them. Either call them direct or click on their website for more information and follow their instructions.
