Managing a Surge in Demand: What Food Banks Need to Know Right Now
Federal funding uncertainty could affect SNAP distribution for 42 million Americans beginning November 1. Combined with furloughed federal workers already seeking assistance and holiday-season preparation, food banks face demand from multiple directions at once.
The difference between food banks that maintain service during a surge and those that exhaust capacity often comes down to a single decision: ordering emergency inventory before you think you’ll need it, not after demand spikes.
Surges in demand aren’t new. They occur due to hurricanes, federal government shutdowns, mass local layoffs, economic disruptions, and seasonal spikes. The operational challenges are similar regardless of cause. Here’s what prepared food banks do differently.
Food Bank Procurement: How to Buy Food You’ve Never Tasted
Beyond Price: How VAFS Reduces Risk and Protects Dignity Through Rigorous Quality Assurance for Food Banks and Hunger Relief Organizations.
Marietta still remembers the phone call. Two truckloads of holiday stuffing that looked more like Shake and Bake breadcrumbs than the cubed stuffing families expected for their Thanksgiving tables. With $44,000 tied up in product that didn’t meet their food bank standards and no resolution from the vendor, she faced what she calls “my nightmare fail as a buyer.”
“I was so ashamed,” Marietta recalls. “We talk about giving people joy during the holidays, but there’s also a certain amount of dignity we want people to have when receiving food. I don’t want it to look like stuff that fell on the floor in a manufacturing facility and got scooped up.”
When Disaster Strikes: The Hidden Crisis That Unfolds in Hours
Understanding the critical role of food supply chains in hurricane and disaster relief.
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters ripped the walls off the MANNA FoodBank in Asheville, North Carolina. Within hours, the primary food distribution hub for Western North Carolina was gone, reduced to open-air parking lot operations with no refrigeration, no permanent shelter, and thousands of additional families suddenly cut off from food access.
But the physical destruction was only the beginning. Kristi Rose was serving in food sourcing at MANNA during Helene. She recalls the moment reality set in: “Communication was really almost non-existent. Our staff couldn’t reach each other due to a complete communication breakdown—no cell service, no internet, no power.
Expanding Access, Increasing Dignity: Why We Offer 50% Off All First-Time Item Orders
At Value Added Food Sales, we believe that supporting hunger relief organizations means more than just moving product. It means investing in long-term strategies that increase agency satisfaction, uphold dignity for our neighbors and clients, and strengthen the sustainability of local feeding networks. That’s why we’ve made the decision to formally adopt our FIRST 50 offer (50% off any single pallet of a never before purchased item)as a standing policy of our organizational mission. Originally launched as a limited-time promotion, this initiative was designed to help food banks and their partner agencies trial new items at significantly reduced cost. What we have learned however, was far more valuable than an uptake in ordering—it sparked meaningful changes in how Food Banks and agencies collaborate to build their Cooperative Purchasing assortments and serve their clients. Supporting Expansion of Item Assortments We know food banks operate within tight budget constraints and must make every dollar count. Trying out a new item—no matter how promising—often feels like a risk. Our 50% off promotion removes that barrier. It empowers agencies to explore new products, test market responsiveness, and gradually diversify their item offerings without blowing their budget. When food bank clients can select from a
Smart Solutions in Challenging Times: How VAFS Food Boxes Can Support Your Community
At VAFS, we understand the unique challenges food banks are facing right now. With funding cuts, fewer donations, and a growing demand for services, every dollar and every decision matters more than ever. That’s why we’ve built our food box program to offer practical, cost-effective solutions that help you stretch your resources and better serve your clients. What We Do: Food Boxes Built at Our Wayland Mixing Center Our food boxes are assembled with care and efficiency out of our Wayland Mixing Center. From there, we’re able to ship pallet quantities of shelf-stable, prepacked boxes directly to your facility—saving you time, money, and labor. We offer two main options: Standard Box Offerings: Curated menus of shelf-stable essentials packed and ready to ship. Custom Builds & Labeling: Choose your mix of items and branding to meet your specific program and community needs. Why Food Boxes Make Sense Right Now In today’s tough funding environment, food boxes can provide real relief for overstretched food banks. Here’s how: 🗸 Variety Without the Volume Many food banks are forced to buy full truckloads (FTLs) of just one or two items to get the best pricing—but that often means limited variety for clients. Our boxes
Moving Forward Without Certainty
A strong early candidate for 2025’s word of the year is uncertainty. At VAFS, we get it and we work on and around it, on your behalf, every day. While uncertainty is nothing new in hunger relief, we’re now in a period of extreme volatility on par with the lead up to COVID, but driven by a tangle of tariffs, federal cuts, and rising demand. Federal funding cuts to programs have started, but we cannot predict holistically the depth, duration, or net impact. The confirmed $1B cuts from Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs may be tip of the iceberg, or not. The global and domestic fallout from tariffs and trade wars, at a minimum, risks short-term price increases and long-term increases in food and packaging costs and availability for both imported and domestically produced commodities. Macroeconomic risk of recession and the knock-on effects on employment, wages, and food insecurity is increasing while Q1 US GDP growth was negative. We are halfway to a qualified recession. Hunger relief organizations need to do even more with less while dealing with invisible supply chain delays that compound core mission risk. Planning depends on assumptions that we can no