The Share Food Share Love food pantry in Brookfield brought back its successful initiative from last year to push shopping carts in the village’s Fourth of July parade, though leaders say it didn’t make as big of a splash this year.
“Last year, we had almost 20 full shopping carts full of food, but this year, I think we didn’t hit the mark,” said John Barnett, the pantry’s communications and marketing director.
The effort was both symbolic and practical, officials said, with the empty carts encouraging viewers to donate food items on the spot while also representing the empty pantries and fridges plaguing those experiencing food insecurity.
“Thousands of our neighbors are experiencing food insecurity for various known reasons,” John Dumas, the pantry’s administrative director, said in a written statement. “Our food pantry’s urgent mission is to provide a welcoming grocery store shopping experience. [It is] a neighborly place where you can fill your shopping cart with the food you want, need and deserve.”
While the initiative didn’t generate as much success during the parade itself, Barnett said it generated momentum that showed up online.
“We’ve seen several hundred dollars come in that day through our donation site,” Barnett told the Landmark. “Part of our endeavor in the context of pushing the carts to push awareness is not just to collect food on the spot but also to help inform a caring community about hunger that’s in their midst.”
Barnett said the pantry’s volunteers may have been able to collect more food during the parade if the group had pushed their advertising efforts harder.
“We started promoting it two weeks beforehand through emails and social media. I think we could have done a better job there, but we can see that those communications had an impact,” he said. “I learned from decades of doing this stuff that … people don’t take in information at the pace we might ideally like. In my previous experience, I learned that people don’t often internalize your message until they’ve seen it 10 times. So, to think that two attempts at a shopping cart themed Fourth of July parade is going to bring in tens of thousands of dollars, it’s just not realistic.”
Spice up your life
Barnett also made mention of a new initiative at the Share Food Share Love pantry that he’s calling the Spice Rack.
“The Spice Rack offers a wide range of spices and spice mixes. It’s a section of the food pantry that just launched last Tuesday evening, right after the parade,” he said. “[Neighbors] now come to a section where you see a wide away of spices and spice mixes that enable the discussion of food sharing to focus on meal planning.”
He said the new section of the pantry’s grocery store-inspired layout, which includes singular spices like garlic powder or paprika as well as specific spice blends, goes hand-in-hand with newly introduced recipe cards that volunteers may hand out to visitors.
“Here’s a recipe. Here’s the spices for that recipe, and then here, adjacent, is all the other food items that go into that recipe. We’re talking about nutritional meal planning, but we’re doing it without the diet lecturing that is typical of [this] industry,” Barnett said.
“Food is something that brings people together,” he added. “Let’s try not to judge people. Let’s try not to push people away when our mission is guided by our north star, as we say, that is the dignity of people.”
For those who are intrigued by the food pantry’s mission and want to learn more or lend their strength, Barnett encouraged one thing: coming to see its operation in-person.
“All of this is kind of abstract until people get with people, and they see what’s going on,” he said. “It’s probably why we have a great many volunteers at the food pantry who have come to us first and experienced just how we’re going about this challenge of alleviating hunger.”
