How To Start A Community Feeding Program

Thanks to Fran Lytle of Brand Champs for this fantastic guest post!

Are you surprised by this statistic? In 2016, the USDA reported 41.2 million people in the U.S. lived in food insecure homes...including 6.5 million children.

Every community in the nation has people who are food insecure. Many times, it’s just a temporary issue. People getting laid off; suffering an unexpected illness; or having to take care of extended family members can cause a strain on the budget. Other times, the issue is more permanent like elderly people who are living only on their meager social security payments.

In other instances, geography is a cause of food-insecurity. Food deserts exist in areas where inhabitants can’t access affordable and nutritious food.

You may be reading this and thinking that food-insecurity doesn’t exist in your community. It does. Sure, there are states and communities with higher incidences of food-insecurity. But just think about it. As people’s life stages and economic circumstances change it’s only natural that their need for 3 meals a day may not be met every day of the week.

OK...so what are you going to do about it? My husband, Bill, and I decided to start a feeding program Manna Café CI in our community of Chincoteague VA in January of 2017. The concept was to serve a free hot lunch to people every Monday. We knew that there was a need because we were the volunteer coordinators of a program that collected and delivered food to households in need … typically 50-60 households each year around the holidays.

One of my friends told me a story about when he was a child and being brought up by a single mom with 5 siblings. Money was tight. Every year around Christmas they would receive food from a local church. He remembered asking her … “Why do they think we’re only hungry at Christmas?”

After hearing this story, Bill and I decided that we didn’t want other children to feel the same way. We believe that no child should go to bed hungry. So, we decided to expand the annual 1-time food delivery and serve a free hot lunch every Monday. Manna Café CI was born!

You may be wondering how to anticipate the number of guests you’ll serve at the feeding program you’ll develop. We thought that was easy. We knew of at least 50-60 households that had been receiving the annual food donations. So, we spread the word to these households and told businesses about it for 3 months before opening Manna Café CI, which we did on the 1st Monday in January 2017.

Sure that our message reached the proper people, we planned to feed 100 on our 1st Monday. We fed 14! What, we wondered, had we done wrong?

We personally knew people who were food-insecure who didn’t come for a free lunch and asked them why they didn’t attend. We received the same response from each one …“I don’t want people to think I’m poor.” Bill I were were surprised by this response because we never used the word “poor.” Instead, we shared that this feeding program is for people who might be in need of food and also companionship.

We’re Brand Strategists and Behaviorists so we realized we had to change people’s perceptions of Manna Café CI, by sharing a story that was relevant to the entire community. So, we started a Facebook page and delivered posters all over town sharing that Manna Café CI serves a free hot lunch every Monday and everyone in the community is invited. Although the lunch is free, we gratefully accept donations which are used to purchase food.

We started to gradually see the number of guests increase. By the end of March, we were feeding 100 people. At the end of the 1st year, we were feeding 325 guests each Monday. In the 1st quarter of 2018, our weekly average is 350-400 guests. People who are in need sit with people who can afford to put a contribution in our donation box (whatever they can afford).

We thought we would build it and people would come. We were wrong. Like any businesses, we had to fine-tune the brand story, the marketing tactics and how we conduct business.

Manna Café CI has become an important part of the Chincoteague community. Not only do we feed people a delicious hot lunch, but we provide them with the opportunity to have fellowship, make new friends and keep in touch with old ones.

This past month, Bill and I were honored to receive the 2018 Good Samaritan Award from the electric cooperatives of 3 states...Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. We were nominated by many members in these states for helping people to feel closer as a community on the Eastern Shore.

You’re probably wondering what we did with the left over food from the 1st Monday when we cooked for 100 but only served 14. We packed it up and delivered it to people we knew could use it. Even if you have left overs, you’ll figure out how to get them to people in need.

So, although estimating the number of guests you’ll serve at your feeding program many seem like a daunting task...you’ll learn how to tweak your message and it’ll become easier each week!

Fran & Bill Lytle are the Co-founders & Directors of the non-profit feeding program Manna Café CI, Inc. in Chincoteague, Virginia and the brand strategy group Brand Champs.