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Welcome to Nourishing News, an e-newsletter to keep you up to date on our programs and services. Open Cupboard is constantly changing in order to keep up with the demand and needs of our community, so this newsletter will help us keep you updated on our work.


Wow! It is hard to believe it, but today marks 1,000 days since we shifted outdoors to our Drive Up program. March of 2020 seems so very long ago - at that point, we were serving about 420 families a week, and now we're serving more than 4,000 families each week. 

When I reflect on the last 1,000 days I am in awe of this community and our amazing volunteers who have dedicated their time in the snow, sleet, heat, and everything in between. 

Katherine Hepburn once said, "Kindness is one of the greatest gifts you can bestow upon another." This holiday season, I feel blessed to witness the gift of kindness each and every day at Open Cupboard - from the volunteers giving their time and talents joyously, to the donors who are providing us with the resources to meet the incredible need. Thanks to these volunteers and donors we're able to make the holiday a bit brighter for thousands of local families. What a wonderful gift!
Check out our video below to learn more about the impact Open Cupboard has on our community.
Open Cupboard - Feeding our Community
Your donation can make TWICE the impact!

Just this week, we received a generous offer from one of our donors - a $7,500 matching gift for donations made before 12/18! This means your donation can now make TWICE the impact.

We’re committed to meeting our community’s needs, and our programs offer fresh and healthy food in many different ways – including drive-up services, Today’s Harvest markets for indoor shopping, Mobile Food Shelf distributions at senior centers and mobile home communities, and deliveries to homes. We’re here to serve our community - but we need your help to keep up with the rising need.

Donors have helped us rise to the challenge over the past few years.  And as inflation has hit household budgets across our community, it has also affected our budget. Our food costs will exceed our budget by over $100,000 this year, so we need your help more than ever. 

Please donate today and make DOUBLE the impact for our community this holiday season. 
Donate Today
Fast, Easy, and Effective:
The Drive-Up Program


It started as a way to keep volunteers and customers safe as we were still learning about COVID-19. But as the pandemic grew, so did our Drive-Up program. It started with serving 60 families a service day, then 100, then 200, and now we are serving well over 300 families each day of our Drive-Up program. 

The program has had many different evolutions as Open Cupboard has tried and learned how to serve our ever-expanding amount of customers best. For example, at the start, milk was put into large coolers to be handed out on the line, now it is far easier just to keep milk on pallets and bring the whole pallet outside--especially with our walk-in cooler.  Each version of Drive-Up had the same end goal: to create the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to serve our customers. 

Now, as customers pull up to our Drive-Up line on Thursday night or Friday morning, they will have three different stops. First, they will stop at our intake volunteers who will collect information and record their visit on our new online system. Second, they will stop at our Choice Rack to choose 2 items that are high value--like juice or laundry detergent, culturally specific--like masa flour or fish sauce, or other items that people would want to choose. At this stop, customers can also ask for diapers, pet food, and feminine hygiene products. Finally, they will pull up to the end of the line where volunteers will load their car with prepacked produce, meat, milk, eggs, dry goods, and bakery. And when their trunk is closed, the customers are all done with the Drive-Up, a process that takes only a few minutes from intake to end. 
Meet volunteer Julie

When Julie retired at the beginning of 2013 and wanted to keep busy, she began to look for places needing help. She happened across Open Cupboard--which looked dramatically different from the Open Cupboard of today. For one thing, back in 2013, Open Cupboard was still located at the basement of Woodbury Lutheran Church. For another, 50 or 60 families served was a busy day; now we serve at least 700 families each day. 

As a volunteer, Julie has found herself doing Intake for our Food Market and later the Drive-Up program. On Fridays, Julie will be in line getting information from our customers, all the while having fun. As she explains, "Seeing many folks on a regular basis is fun for me.  And the dogs that come through with their owners...love that." As it gets colder, you might see Julie inside as she also sometimes helps with our Today's Harvest market on 4th Street. 

For Julie, the social element of volunteering is what she loves most. "Getting to know other volunteers and our customers has been great. We work well together, work hard, but have fun too." And she especially loves it when new people come to our programs and realize how much food they get. To Julie, that helps make it all worthwhile. 

When not helping with Intake, Julie loves to hang out with her dog, Charlee, and go for walks or to the dog park. She has also taken up golfing again after a 30-year hiatus. Julie loves to travel and has been to China, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and England. She also enjoys eating out--you might catch her eating a root beer float with chocolate ice cream (one of her favorite foods). And if she could go back and switch career paths, you might have seen her on TV--either as a stunt or racecar driver.


Drive-Up Intake

Thursdays 2:00-4:00pm and 4:00-6:00pm
 
While Today's Harvest shoppers only need to provide their zip code and household size, for our other programs, customers need to provide a bit more information. This is because our other programs are TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program). Because we are a part of the program we can get things like canned goods, eggs, and produce for free based on how many people we serve. But this also means that we have to ask a few more questions, like name, address, and income level. That is where our Intakers come in. 

Intake is the first step in our Drive-Up and Mobile programs. Here is where the customer will provide all the information. Thanks to our new software system, this is now easier than ever. Once a customer is in the system, we are able to use iPads to find them based on name, address, or phone number. Before this was in place, we used paper sheets to record every visit which not only required a lot of data entry--especially as we continued to see more and more families--but also required people to share their information each time.

Now, once a customer is in the database, they don't have to worry about telling us their address each time or remembering the address for another family they pick up for. It is now super easy to record a visit to our program. We are always looking for intake volunteers, especially for our Thursday Drive-Up program.

If you are interested, you can fill out at volunteer application form at https://opencupboard.org/volunteers/new-volunteers/  Already a volunteer? Email volunteer@opencupboard.org to schedule a training and shift.

Not interested in helping with Intake? Click here for a  graphic to help find the perfect shift for you!

 
Thanks to the generosity of our donors and supporters, we were able to raise $100,000 to support Open Cupboard's mission and programs at our first-annual Fill the Cupboard gala!

These gifts allow us to continue to feed our community. Thank you for your support and we hope to see you again next year!
Volunteer
You can volunteer at Open Cupboard and help feed your community! 
Volunteer
Our Programs
Learn about Open Cupboard's programs and how they each make an impact in the community. 
Learn More

South Oakdale


8264 4th St North,
Oakdale MN 55128


Drive-up Market  
Thursdays 2:00pm-6:00pm
Fridays 10:00am-2:00pm 

Today's Harvest
Monday-Friday 12:00pm-6:00pm
Saturday 10:00am-1:00pm

Website: 
opencupboard.org

 

North Oakdale


5703 Hadley Avenue North, Oakdale MN 55128
 
Today's Harvest
Monday-Friday 12:00pm-6:00pm
Saturday 10:00am-1:00pm


Website
 todaysharvestmn.org





 
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Open Cupboard
8264 4th Street N
Oakdale, MN 55128

Our website is: 
opencupboard.org

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