Local Organizations Collaborate to Share Surplus Food Across Grey & Bruce
Grey Bruce Food Share is a new storage hub and distribution centre for surplus food.
On September 23, a new regional collaboration opened up in downtown Owen Sound. Grey Bruce Food Share is a new storage hub for surplus food, built in partnership between OSHaRE and the Salvation Army church in Owen Sound.
The Food Share program currently serves 25 agencies and organizations in Grey Bruce that need food or other supplies, including meal programs and food banks, but also other agencies like the REACH Centre Grey/Bruce (which uses food to teach cooking skills to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities), and CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association).
I went to visit Grey Bruce Food Share in early November and spoke with Colleen Trask Seaman about this new food hub.
OSHaRE (Owen Sound Hunger and Relief Effort) exists to provide food for those in need in our community and has been serving meals for over ten years. Now, a new food-sharing project has emerged to share food with many other agencies and organizations across Grey and Bruce.
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic started, OSHaRE joined the Food Rescue program managed by Second Harvest, a Toronto-based organization that has been actively diverting food from landfills for many years. Second Harvest has created an app where grocery stores and restaurants can sign up to offer donations of food, which local charities and nonprofits can then register to claim those offers. Here in Owen Sound, a number of stores and restaurants have a reoccurring arrangement with Grey Bruce Food Share to continuously donate to our local food hub.
At the height of the pandemic, OSHaRE received large amounts of food donations and stored them in the OSHaRE dining room when in-person dining was not possible due to public health regulations.
To create a dedicated storage facility, OSHaRE partnered with Barry’s Construction to renovate a space in the building at 265 10th St. E., just across the municipal parking lot from OSHaRE’s primary building at 946 3rd Ave. E. The facility has a walk-in freezer, a walk-in cooler, a sharing fridge, and kitchen work area. (With a new facility up and running, OSHaRE hopes to resume in-person dining in the near future.)
Today, local farmers, grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses and community groups donate a wide variety of foods to Grey Bruce Food Share, including fruits and vegetables, frozen and packaged foods, dairy products, as well as personal hygiene items and winter clothes.
More than 50 farmers are connected to the food hub and they drop off produce such as squash, zucchini, and apples. On the day I visited, one farmer had dropped off the first of fourteen bins of Honeycrisp apples, hopefully enough apples to supply the food hub for most of the winter.
Staff and volunteers at Grey Bruce Food Share weigh all the donations that come in and keep detailed records. (This information is sent to Second Harvest, which posts the data on its website, secondharvest.ca.) The donations by sorting and organizing the items, composting any unusable food through a partnership with a local farmer, and recycling as much packaging as possible. OSHaRE and the Salvation Army use some of the donations for their meal programs, but the rest goes to the Food Share program.
In Owen Sound, the following stores, restaurants, and organizations donate their surplus groceries and other items: Food Basics, Foodland, Giant Tiger, Metro, No Frills, Shoppers Drug Mart, Wholesale Club, Walmart, Zehrs, The European Bakery, Starbucks, and Community Foundation Grey Bruce. Other donors include Shoppers Drug Mart and Walmart in Port Elgin, Chapman’s Ice Cream in Markdale, and Trillium Mutual Insurance Company in Listowel.
Why are these businesses donating food? Grocery stores and restaurants always have food that doesn't sell by a certain date or is unused for some reason. This surplus food is still perfectly good but normally gets thrown in the garbage. Grey Bruce Food Share helps prevent food waste and is able to feed people instead.
Agencies can come pick up food on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and on Saturdays from 9 to 10 a.m.
Grey Bruce Food Share welcomes more grocery stores, restaurants, and organizations to donate. Interested parties can contact Colleen Trask Seaman, Executive Director of OSHaRE, to get set up with Second Harvest and the Food Rescue program.
Grey Bruce Food Share is also actively looking for volunteers to process donations during an afternoon shift (1 to 3 p.m.), Monday to Friday.
You can contact Colleen Trask Seaman by calling (519) 376-3899 or emailing info@oshare.ca. You can find more information on OSHaRE’s website, oshare.ca.
All photos submitted by Arlen Wiebe.
Thank you to sponsors of The Owen Sound Current Writers’ Fund, who make these community contributions possible. Contributions from the community do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.