The Rose Street Food Pantry closed October 27, 2023. It was open for three years in the Westbrae neighborhood in Berkeley, California.
Why did we start this project?
hi. My name is Veronica and I started this project with my husband Henry as a way to provide food to people in Oakland, Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito who are currently struggling with food insecurity. I reached out to local businesses and large food banks in Berkeley who had extra food and bread and stocked it several times a day with high quality food and hygiene supplies. The main reason we created it and ran it for as long as we did was to meet the need of people in our immediate neighborhood. We saw it as a design problem that could be solved by presenting a way to share food and distribute food in a way that elevated the food was was being donated and offered. When free food is sitting on clean shelves, and the pantry itself has artistic signage, it feels like you can trust the source of the food.
Our Little Free Food Pantry was based on the Honor System. Like most pantries that are open are. They are like a Little Free Library, but actually there are so many more variables as you are dealing with perishable food. Books can sit there. Food cannot. Plus, if a Food Pantry is empty and someone is making a point to come there and it's emptry - it's a big disappointment. Free Libraries are... I am just passing by. Food Pantries become a destination. And ours did.
People started to come every day and I really put my heart and soul into it. I tended it every day for three years. I got neighbors to watch it and stock it while we were away. I took it very seriously.
So you are probably wondering why I closed it, right? I have really thought about this a lot so if you are thinking about doing a Food Pantry, definitely read my post mortem. I am not saying -- don't do it. But I am saying, perhaps do it in a Pop Up Way, not a Open 24 Hours a Day way.
We did that and learned a lot.
If you want to hear about the positive stuff, because there was a TON of that... you can jump down to that here.
Here are 4 reasons why I closed our Free Open 24 Hours a day Food Pantry
This is a post mortem and there is some good stuff in here
1. The Demand.
We started it in October 2020. The structure was at first made of wood with 4 cubbies. After 2 months, it started to come apart. Then we switched to metal. We received a donation from a volunteer and used the funds to buy an IKEA metal file cabinet that could hold a lot of food. We installed it, secured it to a street sign, made signage and it was ready for Food Sharing.
There is a timeline that you can check out, but here is where things got bumpy. During 2023, the third year we ran it, it became impossible to keep it stocked, because people were coming by and taking everything. The demand was high. And the people who took it all were stealthy and they worked quickly! It was astounding.
So in the third year, I realized that an unsupervised pantry that is open 24 hours a day just was not going to work anymore. It really did work most of the time for the first 2 years I think because it was quiet and hyperlocal. Then, it seemed that word got out to people who did not understand the intention of it and that it was done just by regular people like us. We did not have 501c non profit status, and that became an issue later on when the Berkeley Food Network (who approached us as a front line project) told us we would not longer be able to pick up food donations because we did not have a Board of Directors and status.
I decided to take a portion of my own income every month and buy food and put it in the pantry for donation. I was very committed to this project and filled up carts at TARGET and Trader Joe's until I realized that there were more food resources I could ask for support and they were very enthusiastic and willing to support what we were doing. Many Berkeley residents came forward and donated funds that went into buying food and maintaining the pantry structure and signage.
I met so many people who just had a backpack on them and they were the most generous, gracious people of all. It was the people who had tracked it as a food source and would come by with five people and just strip the pantry dry when it was full. I realized over time that the mission of the project was feed as many people as possible. I wanted the resources we put in there (and sometimes it was over $400 of food that we received from the food bank I work at now). I think I might not really understood that people will not just inherently want to share food if they are hungry and have a whole family to feed. Was this naive?! Maybe. It doesn't matter now.
2. Cleaning.
No one wants to take free food if there is rice spilled everywhere on the shelves or sticky stuff... so I wiped down the shelves daily. A big part of why I wanted to do this was to elevate food that had been rescued. Leaving food on the ground that is donated does not work. If it's presented on a clean shelf that has clearly been cared for, people are much more likely to take it home.
3. Vandalism.
This happened a few times a month. What did it look like? Signage I made ripped down and thrown on the ground. Food dumped on the ground and thrown into the street. Wrappers left everywhere. Tagging. It was upsetting when it happened, as I did not understand the anger.
It was a form of feedback. I wondered why it was happening, when it happened. I wondered if the people who did these things were frustrated that they made the trek there and there wasn't anything on the shelves. Maybe that was why they were so angry?
There was also a guy named Ray who would leave anti-abortion pamphlets in the pantry on every shelf, every day and I would toss them, every day. I asked him to stop and he refused to stop and continued to take food every day. When this kind of stuff happened, I wanted to quit. It really got under my skin at times and then I had to let it go, because people were getting food. But this guy just would not stop with his pamphlets. Brutal images of fetuses mixed in with out food we were donating. It was pretty challenging. I learned that when you do a project like this, you see the best of humanity and you also see the worst.
4. Time.
The project was taking up much more of my time than I had to give. It was not a minor endeavor and it did not run itself. I am the type of person that doesn't do things in a half-assed way. Either do it well, or don't do it at all. I know now from this experience that bringing love, care and attention to any project I put my energy into is the only way I want to serve.
5. Complaints from Neighbors
We fielded 2 complaints in three years of running the project. We were very lucky that the people in our immediate neighborhood were so incredibly supportive of a project like this. I know that you can't just do this anywhere. We did not have a permit, we asked our neighbors first and they agreed to it.
I still get emails from people who want to donate food, and it's a year later. I know it made an impact. I met so many people who really loved giving to it, and finding great food there. It saved everyone a ton of money on their grocery bills.
I might do another one in 2025, but it will be a Pop Up that is wheeled out at specific times. It will not be available 24-7, that's for sure. That was the biggest take away! So now I know. I will continue to DO SOMETHING and create the kind of world that I want to live in. Projects like this do make a difference.
After doing many different forms of outreach and service (harm reduction, free clothing pop ups, showers on demand) I am going to stick with food justice. People need food, and food is going to become even more expensive under the Trump admin. His plan to deport 11 million people will have a direct effect on food prices, food production, and the quality of food available to people who are just trying to made ends meet.
The Positive Stuff
The pantry became a point of contact for us to all connect with each other, and that's one of the things I miss the most. I truly loved the way it brought people in our neighborhood together. I met so many of my neighbors who were experiencing food insecurity. I met people who saw our kiosk and signage and were dropping off. It gave me faith in the goodness of people. I saw it all the time. Not every day but often. Enough. The generosity, and unconditional giving of people who liked what we were doing for three years was obvious.
There was nothing better than going to the pantry to stock it, to find that someone had already been there and filled it with incredible food. Real food. There was definitely someone who worked at a health food store who would drop off cases of products for donation. It caught on.
What I learned:
Mutual aid works if there is a group of people who are actively caring for the project on a regular basis. I think a project like this would work best if there are 4 people who are taking care of it and each person is responsible for one week- to check the pantry multiple times, to clean it and stock it. One or two people cannot manage something like this. It requires a team. A family or a couple and a few friends.
Also, hyperlocal is best. Try to reach out to people within a 5 block radius. Keep it quiet. A project like this is not meant to scale up and serve 100 people a day. People really need food. Food is very expensive and there are a ton of places to get free food. It's just a matter of distributing it responsibly and with joy.
I still believe that we can be creative in how we redistribute food. Especially food that is going to be thrown out and end up in the dumpster. Find a way to get food to people in your neighborhood who need it.
Thank you to all of our neighbors who took the time to drop food off, shared food from their fruit trees and gardens and volunteered by picking up bread at ACME every Wednesday. Your generosity had a ripple effect.
A huge thank you to Colleen F. Your generosity helped us establish trust with everyone. You ordered and gifted thousands of bags for the bread and you sent us tons of food that we would put out and it would be gone in a half hour. Thank you to Kai for all the times you waited in line at ACME for over a year. Thank you to Berkeley Food Network, Berkeley Food Pantry, STARTER bakery and Berkeley Free Clinic for donating thousands of dollars of socks and food. Thank you to Suzanna on Virginia Street for the beautiful food from your fruit trees!
How did it work?
Since it was open 24 hours a day, we filled the gaps in the food system. It was a place people could go to get food when all other food banks were closed. People came at all hours of the day. I would see cars stopping at 10pm, and lots of people in the morning and throughout the day.
Who used the food pantry?
Seniors on a fixed income, single moms & dads, nannies, day laborers, high school kids, people who are in between jobs, people who are living in their cars and folks who are experiencing homelessness. Lots of people came by bike. We would see the same people come in their cars. It became a destination and a reliable source of food.
We built trust with the people who used the pantry every day. They knew that all the food there was safe. Anything that was not in good condition was removed. I loved that people would bring food from their gardens, and fruit trees.
We gave out BOMBAS socks, fresh produce, coffee beans, hygiene supplies and shelf stable food over the years. The dollar value of what was given away in 3 years was over $80,000.
If you are inspired to do a DIY pantry, please get in touch with me! I support you.
– Veronica
Read the article about our food sharing project in Berkeleyside
