Coming Back Around
Kristin Bulpitt of Copeland Springs Farm and Kitchen during our May 2021 Pay-It-Forward Campaign
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since we first launched our Pay-It-Forward program back in the Spring of 2021. It was a time when restaurants were really struggling to stay open and local families were struggling with food insecurity. Now a year later, things are slowly starting to get back to normal, restaurants are seeing their customers return, but due to a number of factors, local food insecurity continues as a major community challenge.
Kristin Bulpitt from Copeland Springs Farm was our first restaurant partner last year in the Spring of 2021 and now she’s come back around and is sponsoring the May 2022 Campaign. We’ve come a long way this last year; received a lot of donations; and cooked, sealed, and delivered thousands of meals.
During our spring campaign with Bill Hartley from Postal Fish Co., 651 meals were donated, and just this last week the Good Bowls and Pittsboro Eats volunteer teams headed down to Pittsboro to prepare all the bowls. Bill whipped up his classic ‘Rezzy Pezzy’ which is a delicious blend of Carolina Gold brown rice, red peas, chicken, a medley of local green veggies, and a salsa verde topping. The volunteer crew was fortunate enough to get a sample…..delicious!
During this most recent campaign, we added CORA Food Pantry as a community partner to help us distribute meals to an even wider group of families in the area. For the past year, we’ve been distributing bowls through Tych Cowdin at Communities in Schools Chatham County, but recently campaigns have started bringing in between 600 and 800 meals. Tych’s freezers were so full that we were able to join with CORA, and now Pay-It-Forward’s delicious and nutritious meals are being distributed both to families during school events with CIS Chatham and at the local food pantry in Chatham County.
Through our partnership with CORA we learned that inflation is hitting local families particularly hard in their food budgets. CORA’s volunteers have seen an increase in demand for food and meals over the last year, even as the stress of the pandemic eases. The frozen meals are especially popular since they are not only an easy and nutritious meal option, but they can last for so long in the freezer and be heated up weeks or even months after they’re distributed.
If you’re interested in joining our mission of promoting food equity in the community through our Pay-It-Forward program, you can donate some meals right here on our site. The May Campaign doesn’t officially start until the 18th, but we accept donations anytime.
