Groceries for Families: Week 28 - Day 1

Sep 29

It felt so great to be back! The flow of the day around here when shoppers and families come is very inspiring. It has been missed. Today was a wonderful day to come back to. Lots of shoppers flowed in all morning, especially early. By 9:30am there were already 50 bags here. That’s a lot! Tuesday is a very busy day in general and today was no exception. The line at 1:00pm stretched past the basketball court and looped around again. It must have had 75 people in it. Thank goodness the weather was just perfect. Everyone was in a good mood and patient.

Groceries today came from Bellevue Christian Reformed, Bellevue Presbyterian, Crossroads Bible, Cornerstone, Creekside Covenant, Westminster Chapel, Evangelical Chinese and Covenant Presbyterian churches, as well as the Jubilee Friends group. A total of 143 orders came in, which was quite a bit lower than expected. Fortunately about 25 orders carried over from last week. At the end of the day every single order was needed, and the crew was able to create about 5 more out of extra groceries. Somehow numbers just seem to work out around here. Thank you to everyone who participated today!

The center tables of the exit line (the new market area) were very full will all sorts of fruit, vegetables, bakery, and dairy goods.

Volunteers delivered from QFC Crossroads and Safeway Thrashers Corner, which gave a nice variety.

We had extra milk and corn from Farmer Frog, which is both popular. Thank you to everyone who gave extras for today.

With families only coming once per week now, it is great to give them more food

Fresh vegetables came in from the King County Demonstration Garden and a few home gardens. People love fresh vegetables! Thank you.

The food truck this week will be Thursday from 4pm-7pm. It is a new one, Ultimate Melt. Look up their menu – it is unbelievable what they do to a grilled cheese sandwich. They will also be back next week, which is the last week for the food truck.

A few more details about V2…continuing what was sent last night.

Perishables food this week is coming from the USDA through Farmer Frog in Woodinville. Ed took the thrift store truck to the farm at 9:30am this morning to get 6 pallets. It was unloaded at Jubilee into what used to be the market area. We’ve added another carport, so the entire area is covered from the sun and rain. (We’re actually trying to add gutters to make it very dry.)

To add nutritional variety to each box, we purchased food from Costco Business and Cash & Carry today (eggs, tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, and bananas). We want to add lettuce, but the fires in California have caused the lettuce prices to skyrocket, so we didn’t buy much this week.

The crew opened each box and added all the extra items. This started before families arrive and continued all afternoon. Families were first given the bag of non-perishables provided by shoppers and another bag with diapers/hygiene items. They were then asked to come back to take a food box and a gallon of milk. It worked!

This new process looks to be V2 and worked very well today. Both the crew and the families had to learn it, so it will get even better in the coming weeks. We were all pleased with it, despite being very busy for many hours and quite sweaty at the end of the shift.

A quick shout out to the volunteers who worked yesterday and today, including those who answered the call for reinforcements today. It cannot be overstated how much volunteers do to make this entire program run smoothly. There are many things which need to get done each day. Without volunteers, it would be impossible. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Here are the current number of families in the program. This does not include people who registered today, and there were some.

Tuesday: 192
Wednesday: 192
Thursday: 177
Total: 561

Thank you for continuing your support of these dear members of our community. Walking one lady to her car today with groceries, I asked her how things were for her family. She was silent for a moment, and then simply replied “it’s hard”. Then she said there are some signs it is slowly getting better, so she is hopeful. It is people like her you are helping. Life is hard right now for these families…really hard. Keep going; it is working.

Enjoy this extra week of summer, as best you can.

Peace,

Ken Carpenter
Director- Community Care, Jubilee REACH
On behalf of the Jubilee family

Jubilee REACH Communications

Groceries for Families: Week 28 - Day 1

Groceries for Families: Week 28 - Day 2

Groceries for Families: Week 27 - Day 3