Inside City Harvest’s massive Thanksgiving operation
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The day starts at City Harvest’s Food Rescue Facility in Long Island City, where food is destined for delivery throughout the five boroughs. Eagle photos by Victoria Merlino.
By Victoria Merlino
Walking through City Harvest’s cavernous Long Island City Food Rescue Facility feels like being Jack in the giant’s kitchen. The warehouse, where the organization takes extra food procured from restaurants, grocery stores and other places where it would otherwise go to waste, is packed with boxes of acorn squash, stacks of cans and bags upon bags of onions.
“This year we’ll rescue 64 million pounds and over half will be produce,” said Laura Casale, who handles public relations for City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue operation. “So we try to focus on produce, because we drop off to a lot of food pantries and what we’ve found is that people really prefer to take food home and cook it.”
Thanksgiving starts early at City Harvest — think months early. It has to be the way when there are over 1 million New Yorkers who regularly go without knowing where their next meal will come from, let alone a Thanksgiving feast.
Onions, acorn squash and more are on the menu.
A fleet of refrigerated trucks stands at the ready to haul food to pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, daycares and other community food programs. On Wednesday, a truck loaded with frozen turkeys headed to The River Fund, a food pantry and community service organization in Richmond Hill.
The drive from Western Queens to Southeast Queens is smooth, with some light morning traffic. City Harvest didn’t always have the luxury of large, long-haul trucks — when the organization first began in 1982, volunteers were delivering food out of their cars.
Drivers now distribute food from the Long Island City facility, with the help of thousands of volunteers throughout the five boroughs each year. That makes this trip relatively short.
The drive from Western Queens to Southeast Queens is smooth, with some light morning traffic.
The truck stops in front of a nondescript blue house. Out comes Swami Durga Das, executive director of the The River Fund, ready to receive the turkeys. Das’ pantry serves 16,000 families, he says, and on average, he’ll see 1,000 households descend upon the little house every Saturday to get food.
The River Fund offers a host of services dedicated to fighting hunger and poverty. In addition to the pantry, they provide case management, income support, assistance for new and expecting mothers, free school supplies, winter wear and more.
Das says he sees more people coming in over the holiday season for food. Turkeys are heaven, he says.
The River Fund, a food pantry and community service group, is on the list to receive turkeys. The will go on to feed some of the 16,000 families the pantry serves.
“It’s actually normalizing the holiday. Sometimes, a family would forego buying something like that [a turkey] because it adds up and you can’t spend money there. So it makes a holiday for the kids [have] a little more respect and dignity.”
With the turkeys delivered, the City Harvest workers pack up the truck and roll to the next service organization.
