The Future of Food Banks with Feeding America

This post is extra special! We have a guest contributor from Feeding America, our latest community partner. The Relish team was lucky enough to work with like minded people in the innovation space to focus our skill sets to help them think about what the food pantry of tomorrow might look like. 

We'll let them take it away from here.  

A Note From Feeding America

Maura Shea
VP of Innovation

At Feeding America, we are always seeking new ways to help people facing hunger access the meals they need—and that requires an understanding of what's coming next. New technologies, changing social norms, emerging partnerships, and evolving consumer preferences are altering the food system from farm to fork. This evolution presents opportunities and challenges for Feeding America member food banks and the households we serve. With Relish Works' help, we were able to identify some of the primary ways these changes might impact our communities. Relish generously shared their food system research, connected us with experts, and helped us structure our investigation into the future of food.

On June 27, Relish hosted a gathering of over thirty people from around the food system—including three Feeding America member food banks, two Chicagoland food pantries, and several members of our national organization—for a structured workshop on the future of food. The session was a huge success and we went on to replicate it at a Feeding America conference in July, inviting all Feeding America food banks to join the conversation.

We're still uncovering the opportunities that the future might hold, but we are grateful for Relish's partnership and look forward to continued collaboration on the journey. Thank you for your support!

Feeding America is the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization. Its network of 200 food banks across all 50 states provide food and improve food security for more than 40 million people facing hunger each year.

For us at Relish, planning and facilitating a workshop was a significantly different way to volunteer when compared to our previous visits to Breakthrough or Kids Food Basket. A big part about Heart to Serve is the willingness to get out into the community and serve however we can to the best of our abilities. Usually this means volunteering our time and muscle, but not necessarily our knowledge of human centered design. Our partnership with the Innovation team at Feeding America empowered us to use our workplace skill set to help them provoke thoughtful dialogue in the national organization and seriously consider how the world, and consequently food banking, is changing around us.

Of course, this workshop would not have been possible without the hard work of the Food Systems team; Relish and the FANO team thank them for lending their framework and graciously letting us build off their content to shape the workshop. Thanks to everyone in the office who helped set up the space, facilitate conversations, or simply let guests know where the coffee was. We couldn't have pulled it off without your help.

Relish looks forward to using our human centered design and innovation skills in other areas with new partners in the future. 

-Sasha Yan