Silver Defender, a Fort Lee-based maker of antimicrobial adhesive films, is donating its product to help protect drivers and other staff members at Table to Table, a non-profit program that collects and distributes food that would otherwise be discarded.
The company said in an Oct. 21 statement that it would launch the effort by covering the door handles and steering wheels on the charity’s delivery trucks, along with other hightouch surfaces in its offices. Table to Table serves Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Passaic counties.
“In a time filled with uncertainty, organizations like Table to Table play an important role in ensuring community needs are met,” said Zeynep “Z” Ekemen, Silver Defender’s managing partner. “We wanted to extend the highest standard of clean to the dedicated employees of Table to Table so they can service those in need safely.”
Silver Defender also donated covered high-touch surfaces with its films at Table to Table’s 5th Annual Golf Classic, held on Oct. 5. Money raised at the event helped the program provide more than 500,000 meals.
“While new partnerships are always exciting and very much welcomed, our relationship with Silver Defender resonates to the core of our mission,” said Ilene Isaacs, executive director of the Hasbrouck Heights-based charity. “Table to Table is focused on the safe distribution of the fresh food we bring into the community. We are thrilled to be working with such an innovative group of women who are equally committed to keeping our neighbors safe and healthy. We look forward to exploring the many ways that we can work together.”
Silver Defender’s films are activated by light, air pressure and touch. Silver ions then act on pathogens, keeping the surfaces clean. In a recent interview, Ekemen told NJBIZ that she and her partners began developing the product two years ago and that they had it ready in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading across the U.S. She said the film is being used in a wide variety of buildings, including schools, stores, airports and offices. “We’re actually on every common area door of the World Trade Center building,” she said.
Table to Table’s refrigerated trucks pick up perishable food from about 150 donors, including restaurants, supermarkets, corporate and hospital cafeterias and food distribution facilities. The food is then delivered to more than 250 community organizations, ranging from soup kitchens and homeless shelters to senior adult facilities and day care centers. In August, financial services companyCIT Group Inc. donated more than 100,000 meals to the organization. Table to Table said it delivered enough food last year to produce more than 26 million meals.
When Ilene Isaacs started, she didn’t really know what food rescue was; only that she wanted to help eradicate hunger. Now she’s an anti-hunger advocate with 18 years’ experience and 250 agencies relying on her work.
Table to Table, a food-rescue organization in New Jersey, intended to deliver 27 million meals in 2020. But the global pandemic left millions of families hungry and food-insecure. Table to Table has already delivered close to 30 million meals, three months from the end of the year.
The community-based organization could do even more, if it had more. Executive director Ilene Isaacs, whose default attitude is exasperation at any food that goes to waste, recalled one distribution site where 500 people lined up for produce—and 200 of them went home empty-handed because there wasn’t enough to go around.
“Food rescue” is what it sounds like. When grocery stores or restaurants throw away perfectly good, fresh food, Table to Table saves it by the truckload, and delivers it at no charge to smaller food banks or schools or nursing homes that provide it to community members.
This year alone, Table to Table has already delivered close to 30 million meals to food insecure residents.
Table to Table has rescued and delivered food since 1999, and currently has seven 26-foot refrigerated trucks in northeast New Jersey, in and around Newark, a largely Black and Hispanic city that is home to some of the state’s poorest residents. Before the pandemic, 28 percent of the city’s residents lived in poverty, according to the census. But food insecurity has doubled nationwide since the start of the pandemic, and tripled in families with children, according to Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research.
And New Jersey’s neediest zip codes are a short drive from its wealthiest, making Table to Table’s work possible. Need and financial support are often neighbors.
Food insecurity has doubled nationwide since the start of the pandemic, and tripled in families with children.
When Isaacs joined the team in 2002, she didn’t really know what food rescue was; only that she wanted to help eradicate hunger. As a former school psychologist, she believed that had to come first. It wasn’t possible to help people with other problems if they were hungry.
Now, she’s a seasoned anti-hunger advocate with 18 years’ experience. Studies have shown that America wastes 40 percent of its food. And during the peak pandemic months, food that had been produced to the specifications of global food retailers and institutional kitchens had to be dumped and plowed under fields because it couldn’t be rerouted to service other markets. Isaacs is more determined than ever to get it to people who need it.
—
We have seven drivers and five people working in the office. Depending on the day, we have six or seven trucks out on the road. They have regular routes: they stop at places that donate—the distributors or supermarkets—and they drop the food off to shelters or pantries or schools.
Our drivers are not your typical driver. They are not just picking something up from point A and delivering it to point B. The drivers become a part of the fabric of the communities that they’re going to. They know the different directors. If there’s a school on their route and there’s an extra pallet of apples on the truck, they’ll make sure it gets to the school. I always say they are part social worker, part public relations.
More need, more food, more options
At the beginning of Covid, many of the agencies that we bring food to closed because they couldn’t get volunteers and were concerned about their exposure. We had all this extra produce, and we asked, how can we save it for people to have later?
And that was the genesis of a project we did, a unique partnership between a non-profit and a for-profit organization. We each brought our own strengths: Matriark Foods, a business started two years ago by a woman from the non-profit world with a similar mission, to prevent food from going to waste, upcycles food waste for soups and stews and shelf-stable items that it provides to schools, hospitals, and food banks. And we have the logistics and partnerships to source food that is still good to eat but can’t be sold. So Matriark took our produce and turned it into frozen stews. And we stored them in our freezer warehouse space.
By the end, we were able to distribute 7,900 four-serving containers of this wonderful vegetable stew. They were packaged in plastic quart containers with attractive labels, like you get soup from a grocery. It was a nice thing for people to receive and bring home. We gave it to lots of different organizations and people seemed extremely pleased.
The drivers become a part of the fabric of the communities that they’re going to.
Subsequently the agencies got back-up, so the issue of us having too much extra food was not an issue at all. The greatest question is can we do it again: We received funding from ReFED, a national non-profit, to do the project. We would love to be able to do it again, but it will require more fundraising.
The demand is just extraordinary. The biggest difference is that people who never before in their lives needed assistance with food now do. People getting on line may have no idea about the system, no idea about how the distribution works. They just know their family is hungry and they need to find a way to feed them.
And the saddest are the families that were just making it, those who had pulled themselves into a position where they had jobs and apartments and were able to feed their families. And they just had it all taken away from them. Now, the question is, will they ever get back to that point?
The dream: To be obsolete
Growing up in Brooklyn, I didn’t realize that access to food wasn’t as easy as it appeared to be. My mother was a great cook and was before her time in believing in the importance of vegetables and fruits and healthy food. She worked really hard to access it, even though we weren’t wealthy by any means.
I went to Brooklyn College and certainly being in college in the 70s helped me recognize the inequalities that existed. I learned at that point about the need and saw the need firsthand in my travels.
I was living in Ohio, planning on moving back to New Jersey, and I was here looking for housing when I saw a newspaper ad for Table to Table. I was intrigued: Food rescue made so much sense. The food is here. It will be wasted. But otherwise, it’s the best food that somebody could eat, the food that people need in order to be healthy and to grow and to develop and to thrive. So, I thought, that’s where I’ve got to be. And I’ve been at Table to Table for 18 years.
Table to Table’s food is donated from restaurants and grocery stores, and 250 agencies rely on its distributions.
At the time I didn’t realize the enormity of it. People think food rescue means you go to a restaurant and get a tray of leftover lasagna. I didn’t realize that there were pallets and pallets of food that were being wasted, that otherwise would have been thrown out. I didn’t recognize the hugeness until I started working with Table to Table.
Back then, there was a van and maybe we had a truck. We did small supermarket pickups and we were excited if there was a U-boat (an industrial cart, similar to a hotel luggage trolley). God, that seemed like a major pickup. Our trucks used to be 14-foot trucks. Now, if I even hint at getting a truck smaller than 26 feet, the drivers start yelling at me.
I didn’t realize that there were pallets and pallets of food that were being wasted, that otherwise would have been thrown out.
It was a big deal in 2002 when we rescued enough food for nearly 2 million meals. In 2003, it was nearly 3 million meals. And here we are in 2020 and we’re 60 percent over our 27 million meal goal.
We pick up food waste from distributors and supermarkets. But the truth is there is so much more on the farms. Farms are going fallow because there isn’t the opportunity to sell or to harvest the food, all while people are starving. There has to be some connection between the two. We pay farmers not to grow. Pay farmers to grow, instead, and get the food to the people who need it. And as importantly, this food is just going to go into landfills that are creating another problem in our society.
The food we get is donated, and we have 250 agencies that depend on us. My fear is that one day a distributor we count on is not going to have food for us. My biggest worry is that people will need the food and we can’t provide it; that there won’t be enough food.
I can’t walk into a supermarket here, if I know that it’s not one of ours, without talking to the manager or the owner to try to get them to consider donating food.
The happiest day of my life would be if there was no longer a need for our service. The happiest day by far.
Dealers, city officials, high school students and the DGAC teamed up to assist Table to Table, bringing over 9500lbs of food to the doors of 1000 families. Credit: www.dogoodautocoalition.com
On any given Friday before the pandemic, families across Newark would flock to their local school to fetch fresh vegetables.
“Zucchini, carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, green beans, Brussels sprouts — the list goes on,” said Dwayne Tatum, the parent liaison at George Washington Carver Elementary, one of dozens of district schools that gave donated produce to families each week. “Any vegetable you can think of has passed through us.”
Then came the coronavirus, which shuttered Newark schools last month and left the free vegetable giveaway that had been available at more than 30 city schools in limbo. The disruption could not have come at a worse time. The pandemic has kept many residents out of work and short on food. Meanwhile, many food pantries are struggling to meet the surging demand.
So school employees who ran the weekly vegetable distribution came up with a solution: They moved their operations to nearby church lots, where residents now can walk up or drive through to pick up the produce. Tatum and other volunteers are even delivering the vegetables to families who can’t leave their homes.
“Whenever we hear about a family that needs food, we make sure they get it,” said Tatum, who loads leftover vegetables into his large pick-up truck and delivers them to families identified by the school social worker.
The volunteer effort to keep the produce giveaway going is just one example of school workers improvising in order to maintain the critical services that schools provide even when buildings are closed and students are stuck at home. Attendance workers are still tracking down missing students, counselors continue to offer social-emotional support, and teachers and still assigning work and giving lessons — though all those efforts now happen remotely, through phone calls, texts, and video chats.
But making sure children and families are fed is paramount in a city where more than 80% of district students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch at school and more than 28,000 children live in households that receive food assistance.
Since school buildings closed on March 16, hundreds of food service workers have continued to show up for work, donning gloves and face masks as they hand out bagged meals to families each day. (Despite those efforts, many families have not picked up the grab-and-go meals, in some cases because they fear leaving their homes or must work during the pick-up hours.)
One of the groups supplying food to Newark is Table to Table, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that collects excess produce, meat, and bread from supermarkets and food-distribution companies and delivers it to homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Last year, the organization delivered enough donated food for 26 million meals.
More than half of its shipments go to Newark, where there is an abundance of need — along with groups eager to help, said Julie Kinner, the organization’s director of recipient relations and community affairs.
“It’s incredible to me how often I hear from people in Newark,” she said. “Not from individuals needing food, but from people who can serve it.”
For several years, Table to Table has sent donated food to Newark schools that act as distribution sites. One of the people who hatched the partnership was Joan-Marie Foushee’, a support staffer at Central High School who also leads a South Ward nonprofit. Every Friday for the past four years, Central has given out the fresh produce to community members, students, and staffers. As word got out and other schools asked to join, Foushee’ agreed to share the vegetables on one condition.
“If you want us at your school, you have to adopt three other schools,” she said. Before long, other schools were acting as distribution hubs, giving portions of their Table to Table shipments to other schools so that the giveaway kept growing.
When the pandemic shut down school buildings, Foushee’ and others were determined not to let the vegetable distribution vanish. Several local churches agreed to let the volunteers set up makeshift pantries on their sites. Central moved to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, Mount Vernon School relocated to Cornerstone Baptist Church, and Carver shifted to Community Church of God.
LeKeshea Brooks-Wertz is a school social worker who helped run the vegetable distribution at John F. Kennedy School, which enrolls students with multiple disabilities. When the coronavirus struck, she wasn’t sure how her work could continue.
“When they said school was closing, I was like, ‘What’s my role? What am I going to do to be helpful?’” she said. She decided to start loading up her truck with grab-and-go meals from schools and delivering them to homebound families. On Fridays, she includes vegetables from Pleasant Grove church.
“God didn’t bless me with this car for myself,” she said. “He blessed me so I could help other people.”
At the Community Church of God, a small army of volunteers gathers each Friday to unload and bag Table to Table’s shipments, which have included pallets of fresh produce, hundreds of gallons of milk from Barlett Dairy, and meal kits from HelloFresh. Community members can pick up food bags themselves, or register online for a home delivery by Douglas and Maggie Freeman, siblings and South Ward community activists who have helped spearhead the vegetable distribution.
Along with Tatum and the Freemans, one of the site leaders is
Singleton, the parent liaison at Hawthorne Avenue School. Before the pandemic, Singleton organized a vegetable giveaway at his school on Fridays — sometimes with help from his mother and grandmother, who live in the neighborhood — and a “Parent Cafe” on Mondays with donated pastries from a Panera Bread in Clifton, about 15 miles from Hawthorne.
Singleton picked up the vegetables and pastries in his Volkswagen Jetta, which he calls “The Hawthorne Car” because he uses it so frequently for work. Now he uses it to deliver vegetables to families who can’t leave their homes, along with Chromebook laptops to students who need them for virtual learning.
“I maybe bit off more than I can chew, but I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Just to see the smiles — that’s what keeps me going.”
Singleton has recruited a crew of parent volunteers for the Friday food giveaway, which he asked Hawthorne teachers to advertise to families on Google Classroom and in messaging apps. One of the volunteers is Andria Belcher, who has five children, including two who attend Hawthorne.
After losing her job at Newark Liberty International Airport due to the shutdown, Belcher relies on the vegetables to help feed her own family. Yet she also wanted to help her neighbors.
“There’s so many of us that are struggling,” she said. So when Singleton invited her to volunteer at the church, she didn’t hesitate. “Every Friday, I’m there.”
The free vegetable distribution happens each Friday at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church (198 Chadwick Ave.) from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and at Community Church of God (13 Grant Ave.) from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. For more info, email communitydevelopmentcorp@gmail.com.
A prominent New Jersey meat supplier is making a substantial donation to a non-profit organization that will help people in need of food during the coronavirus pandemic.
D’Artagnan, a meat supplier based in Union, will donate 44,000 pounds of meat valued around $430,000 to the non-profit Table to Table. The donations, which began this week, will go to people in Bergen, Hudson, Essex, and Passaic counties and provide 68,000 meals.
“D’Artagnan has long applauded and supported Table to Table’s efforts in our community,” D’Artagnan CEO Ariane Daguin said in a statement. “We believe that during times like these, its crucial to come together ‘all for one and one for all’ to support our neighbors. We’re pleased to be able to help in any way possible, especially during a time when people are struggling to get protein.”
Table to Table will be picking up the meat and distribute it to the families in North Jersey who need the food now more than ever, with the coronavirus causing a strain on food banks across the state due to a lot of businesses and employers being closed.
“The current crisis has overwhelmed local food banks with an unprecedented need for food donations, especially protein,” Table to Table Executive Director Ilene Isaacs said in a statement. “We, along with our community partners, are beyond grateful for this meaningful contribution from our friends and neighbors at D’Artagnan. It will be redistributed safely and will provide protein for more than 68,000 meals.”
DGAC volunteers and DCH Millburn Audi assisted staff from Ironbound Community Corporation and Table to Table to feed 800+ families in one day. The teams packaged bags of 2,500 pounds of food, including produce and meal kits donated by Hello Fresh, a Newark based company.
Volunteers also loaded three vehicles to deliver the bags of food to five different apartment communities. The buildings included Pacific, Terrell Homes, Aspen, Hyatt, and Pennington Court buildings. Drivers also delivered boxes of food to 50 families within the Ironbound area of Newark.
Evie Mincey from Ironbound Community Corporation emphasized the importance of submitting a census this year so that Government funding for community efforts will be given as effectively as possible.
If you need help registering for the census, please contact: (973)465-0555
Si necesita ayuda para registrarse en el censo, comuníquese con: (973)465- 0555
Thank you to Al Khouri and the team at DCH Millburn Audi, to Julie Kinner and staff from Table to Table, the team from ICC and our DGAC Volunteers. To learn more about giving back to your community, please enroll in the DGAC today!
My9nj.com Newark firefighters pack and distribute food to the needy.
Julie Kinner of Table to Table & John Elliott of CBS New York discuss Table to Tables food rescue operation during COVID-19 crisis. PART 1
Julie Kinner of Table to Table and John Elliott of CBS New York talk about Table to Table’s food rescue operation and response during COVID-19 crisis. PART 2
DGAC, DCH Millburn Audi, Table to Table, and Ironbound Community Corporation make bags of food and deliver around the community www.dogoodautocoalition.com
