Restaurant Resiliency Program Drive-Thru Pantry Program With funding from New York State, the Food Bank launched the Restaurant Resiliency Program, allowing us to purchase and distribute 40,800 high quality, nutritious meals from restaurants between October and December. The program addresses the dual challenges of restaurants struggling to stay afloat and soaring rates of food insecurity due to the economic fallout of the pandemic. Children’s Programs The Food Bank’s BackPack Program, School Pantry Program and Summer BackPack Program provided over 2.5 million meals to 9,000 children and teens throughout the school year. In addition to weekly food bags, these programs provided personal hygiene items, school supplies and holiday baskets to help children across our 23 county service area. Senior Food Delivery Program Low income seniors without their own transportation face a unique barrier to accessing fresh food. In partnership with low income senior housing sites, the Food Bank’s Senior Food Delivery Program delivers nutritious food to low income seniors at their housing facilities every other week, ideally during weeks when transportation to a grocery store is unavailable. 1,300 seniors at more than 20 senior housing sites participate in the program. Born out of the pandemic, we learned that drive-thru pantries are an efficient way to help hundreds of families in underserved communities in just a few short hours. More than 200 drive-thru distributions were held throughout our service area in 2021, thanks to partners like Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany, Capital District Area Labor Federation, and BSNB. Retail Store Donation Program The Retail Store Donation Program (RSDP) enables the Regional Food Bank to increase our emergency food distribution by collecting food like meat, dairy, and produce from participating grocers that would otherwise be thrown away. In 2021, 13.5 million pounds of food were rescued from 230 stores across 20 retailers, providing 11.25 million meals to our neighbors in need. Just in Time Delivery Program Many of our partner pantries have to limit the amount of fresh food they provide due to lack of space to store or transport these products. The Food Bank’s new Just in Time Delivery Program brings produce, dairy, and other perishable food to pantries ‘just in time’ for distribution, without them having to transport or store it. The Schenectady Foundation and the Seymour Fox Memorial Foundation offered generous support to pilot this program. 6
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