Chris Lavenets was driving toward Hyannis from Eastham on a sweltering Thursday afternoon, on a mission:
Make sure the Family Table Collaborative’s food distribution, scheduled for 4:30 pm in the parking lot of the Hyannis Youth and Community Center on Bassett Lane, went off without a hitch.
The Collaborative’s refrigerated van was packed; if all went according to plan they would hand out almost 370 meals to people already lining up.
Asked if summer traffic was a burden, she scoffed:
“People need food. Doesn’t matter the temperature, traffic, or weather. We’ll be there.”
Lavenets volunteers to organize a team, drive the truck, handle sign-up sheets, calling out first-name greetings to many stopping by for a pick up. The van also shows up every other week at the Elks Lodge parking lot off Route 6 in Eastham. Prepared meals are created at the Family Table’s commercial kitchen in South Yarmouth.
The effort began as a rapid response to COVID, and has sustained. A key partner became Whole Foods Market in Hyannis, where Family Table picks up 20 to 40 “banana boxes” filled mainly with produce every day, seven days a week.
Whole Foods has super-high standards for what they put on shelves; food they send back could have a blemish but often remains enticing and edible. Family Table’s culinary team turns that and other donations into great offerings like sweet potato gnocci, broccoli alfredo, beef stir fry, stuffed peppers. The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance adds dozens of containers of chowders and stew every week as part of their “Small Boats, Big Taste” program.
To make it mobile, Whole Foods also donated the refrigerated food truck, a $90,000 piece of equipment.
All told Family Table provides as many as 700 meals a week. During last winter’s blizzard, that number grew to thousands. Last Thanksgiving, Family Table distributed 2000 turkey dinners in one weekend.
In Hyannis a few weeks ago, chicken was the main donated protein, so the crowd was seeing pepper ranch chicken, chicken fajita, lemon chicken. Pain d’Avignon bread was an added treat.
“Our mantra is to say yes to donations,” smiled Deke Knight, the operations manager. “It could be a home gardener with tomatoes, a large wholesaler, a little or a lot, we try to say yes.”
Another manifested mantra needed no explanation: Every person was treated as a neighbor, not a hint of judgement or condescension.
The goal and role is to offer food, not create barriers to access.
Could Family Table’s model be replicated, a template for fighting hunger anywhere?
Seems so, but this effort is driven in large part by volunteers; the engaged retirement community on the Cape is hard to beat. Plus Family Table Collaborative’s co-founder Jeni Wheeler is a great ambassador and drives a vision for sustainability that includes private catering to offset close to 50 percent of free food distribution expenses.
So it’s working here and now. But far better would be to eliminate the reason it exists:
The hidden scourge of what is politely referred to as “food insecurity.”
