More room for fresh food at Waterloo Region food bank
Food bank estimates it will be able to store an additional 45K kg (100K lb) of food
More room for fresh food will be available at the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, thanks to a recent expansion of their on-site Fresh Approaches Food Centre.
The Fresh Approaches program, which includes the centre's expansion, aims to meet the growing demand to provide fresh fruit, vegetables and meat to the community said Wendi Campbell, chief executive officer of the Food Bank of Waterloo Region.
"There is a really important community conversation about fresh food," Campbell told CBC News.
"We want to be able to support the overall health and well-being of the community."
Store for future use
The added storage will go toward being able to handle more fresh food coming in, store it and distribute it.
"It's going to allow us to take large quantities of product that we can't distribute out to the community quickly and save for future use," she said.
For example, the food bank received a large quantity of squash in the fall of 2017, Campbell said. The new processing room will allow staff to cut it up, repackage it and freeze it for use in the winter months.
She adds they plan to use the same method on large quantities of meat and even coffee.