Rural Community Food Access Through Food Rescue

Rick Garmon manages the Our Lady of the Light Food Pantry in La Luz, NM.  They have been in operation since June 2012 and the impact they have in their small rural community is tremendous.  The pantry’s hunger relief services in 2023 provided food to more 5612 families over the course of one year and touched the lives of 15,409 people in La Luz and surrounding communities. This year they have already served 1432 families and helped 3990 individuals.

The parish is one of the hundreds of food pantry partners Roadrunner Food Bank works with across the state. Part of the food they receive comes from our Albuquerque warehouse and a large portion of the rest of the food they receive comes from food rescue partners like Walmart.  Since Walmart is a national partner of Feeding America, and, Roadrunner Food Bank is the state’s Feeding America member, our food rescue team is able to connect trained food pantry partners like Rick’s organization to Walmart stores — to keep the food right in the community where the store is located.

Our Lady of the Light Food Pantry commits their team of helping hands to coordinate consistent Walmart store pickups. The food pantry regularly picks up grocery donations that are no longer able to be sold but still have the ability to be used.

Rick shared with us the importance of their relationship with Walmart, “We have relied heavily on our Walmart partners for food recovery which sustains our pantry. Our professional and personal relationships with Walmart is essential to our operations and survival.  Their steadfast partnership accounts for 70 percent of our total food program. Without our Walmart recovery program our pantry would not have survived over the years.  We are sincerely grateful for our relationship with Walmart and their continued support in feeding the hungry in our community.”

Rick shared some recent photos of a recent food rescue pick up at their local Walmart.  We hope you will check them out!

Giving Food

Food Rescue is one way we capture unsaleable food from retailers like Walmart and Sam’s Club. Every year it represents millions of pounds of product some of which comes from grocery stores (6.5 million last year!!!). One unique aspect of our partnerships with food donors and our partner agencies network who receive food from us is through what is known as “Direct Delivery.”

It’s “food sharing” that allows us to deliver donated food products without ever coming or having to be processed through the food bank. Our drivers handle the store pickup and deliver it right to an affiliated partner. The partner needs to have the right infrastructure and cold storage. Recently, we restarted this program and delivered 14 pallets of assorted food items that came from 8 local Walmart stores to one of our Albuquerque partner agencies – Rio Grande Food Project. The model saves both organizations resources in time, fuel, food costs, and staff time. It helps get food into the hands of people faster for a partner agency to use right away at an upcoming distribution.

Rio Grande Food Project is one of more than 350 partner organizations we provide food to across the state. The nonprofit partner distributes food 3 times weekly and helps hundreds of families each week. Check out their walk-in cold storage that went from being fairly empty to brimming with food – just in time for their next distribution.

Learn more about where our food comes from.