Keyword/Tag: D'Arrigo Bros of NY

Brighter Bites & Key Partners Relaunch in NYC Schools, Delivering 1M lbs of Free Produce to Children

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Christina Blick -

Media Contact:

Melanie Button, Regional Program Director

melanie.button@brighterbites.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Brighter Bites Relaunches in NYC Schools to Deliver 1 Million Pounds of Free Produce to Children and Families

Brighter Bites, the Connected Chef, D’Arrigo New York, and City Harvest join forces to impact 2,600+ families across 12 schools

New York, NY (November 2, 2020) – Brighter Bites returned to NYC schools in October with a promise to deliver 1 million pounds of free, fresh fruits and vegetables, along with nutrition education resources, to children and their families despite the ongoing pandemic. The evidence-based program feeds with impact by pairing 20-25 pounds boxes of produce with nutrition education for parents and their children. The program will serve thousands of families at participating schools in Woodside, Astoria, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Brownsville, Bushwick, Manhattan Valley, and Hamilton Heights.

Brighter Bites relaunched its program with the Connected Chef, D’Arrigo New York, and City Harvest on the heels of a new report showing how the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated and exacerbated persistent food access problems throughout New York City. Communities that lack consistent access to healthy affordable food concurrently experience high rates of food insecurity and diet-related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and complications from COVID-19. The Brighter Bites program responds to these concerns with a targeted, school based program that focuses on addressing the needs of families safely.

City Harvest has committed 30,000 pounds of produce per week for the program with Hunt’s Point based distributor D’Arrigo New York committing an additional weekly donation of hard to source family favorites such as bananas, pears, peaches and more. “We are thrilled to be teaming back up with Brighter Bites to service the city that we love.” said Gabriela D’Arrigo, VP of Marketing and Communications at D’Arrigo New York. “With all the uncertainty that 2020 has brought, access to healthy nutrition should not be another ‘thing’ to add to the list of concerns for families.”

Distributions began on October 7th and will continue weekly throughout the school year. During the first weeks of the program families took home 10-12 items, including tomatoes, bananas, onion, pears, apples, cauliflower, cucumber, celery, peaches, winter squash, and more. Distributions are planned to continue regardless of whether or not schools remain open for in-person learning. As part of the program, Brighter Bites supports a ‘train the trainer’ model in which teachers teach in-class (or virtual) nutrition lessons. Additionally, parents utilize the Brighter Bites App to access a vast library of recipes, tip sheets, and produce how-to’s, ensuring that they have the knowledge and skills to incorporate the produce into home cooked meals and snacks.

“The ground is shifting under parents’ feet every day,” said Melanie Button, Regional Program Director, Brighter Bites. “Families can rely on our program for ready access to fresh, immune-boosting foods throughout the year. The communities we serve have been especially hard hit by COVID-19 and the food we provide is more critical than ever.”

The produce first travels to the Long Island City headquarters of The Connected Chef where it is packed into family friendly boxes before it is received at each school. During a typical year, this packing would have happened via parent volunteers at each school. Due to COVID-19, large groups of parents cannot convene at schools to do so. The Connected Chef’s experience with their LifeLine delivery program, which provides weekly deliveries of nutrient-dense foods to Western Queens residents, made them the perfect choice to be hired by Brighter Bites to oversee the produce packing and delivery. As an added benefit, funds from the Brighter Bites program will allow The Connected Chef to build out their distribution center as a resource for Queens and Brooklyn mutual aid groups.

Brighter Bites is seeking contributions to sustain this work over the full 2020-2021 school year. Those interested in learning more or making a donation may visit www.brighterbites.org/fund/newyo rk. A donation of just $15 provides a month’s worth of produce for a participating family.

About Brighter Bites:

Brighter Bites is a nonprofit that creates communities of health through fresh food with the goal of changing behavior among children and their families to prevent obesity and achieve long-term health. Brighter Bites is an evidence-based, multi-component elementary school, preschool, and summer camp program that utilizes reliable access to fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, and consistent exposure to recipes and messages that feature fresh food. Since 2012, Brighter Bites has provided more than 40 million pounds of produce and millions of nutrition education materials to more than 475,000 individuals (including teachers) in Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, and Southwest Florida. To learn more about Brighter Bites visit www.brighterbites.org.

Brighter Bites Names Top Donor Partners of 2018-19

Posted on September 23, 2019 by Christina Blick -

Today, Brighter Bites announces its top donor partners from across the produce industry.

Together these eight organizations helped donate produce that Brighter Bites distributed to 27,000 families in Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and Southwest Florida during the 2018-19 academic year.

Brighter Bites Top Donor Partners are:
• The Coastal Companies Foundation
• D’Arrigo Bros. of New York
• Hardie’s Fresh Foods
• Lipman Family Farms
• Mann Packing
• Southern Specialties
• Sysco Freshpoint
• Taylor Farms Texas

Brighter Bites would not be possible without the remaining produce and logistical support that come from our Feeding America Food Bank partners who include the Houston Food Bank, North Texas Food Bank, City Harvest, Capital Area Food Bank, and Harry Chapin Food Bank.

“Our ability to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to our families is completely dependent on the support of our partners,” said Brighter Bites CEO Rich Dachman. “The generous donations of produce from these partners and other suppliers, alongside our extraordinary partnerships with our food banks, allows us to achieve our mission of improving the health of our society, especially those who have fewer resources. I believe our industry has a responsibility to utilize its produce to fight the childhood obesity epidemic and improve health outcomes. I challenge all in the industry to get involved. Brighter Bites is a great place to start so we can scale our program to reach even more communities in need of fresh food and better health.”

A student at “Joe” May Elementary School in Dallas enjoys apples donated to Brighter Bites by Taylor Farms Texas.

This Brighter Bites announcement was reported by the following publications:

The Produce News
The Packer
Perishable News
And Now U Know

Brighter Bites NYC – Behind the Scenes

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Christina Blick -

When Brighter Bites was founded in 2012 in Houston, TX, we had big dreams for our organization. We knew that food illiteracy and a lack of access to fresh produce for low-income families didn’t stop at the Texas border, and we wanted to create communities of health through fresh food everywhere we could go. In the fall 2017, after celebrating our organization’s fifth birthday, we took our program out of Texas for the first time and to the biggest city of them all — New York City.

In preparation for our big move, we worked hard to make sure we could have the same impact in New York City that we’d replicated in so many Houston, Dallas, and Austin schools. While our program’s core, three-part formula of produce distribution, nutrition education, and a fun food experience didn’t need to change, we had a few logistical details to work out to be able to deliver our signature eight to twelve varieties of fresh produce to all our families in such a densely populated area.

Our first step was finding New York-based partners who believed in our organization just as much as we did. Melanie Button, our program director in NYC, introduced us to some of the incredible friends and partners we’ve made in NYC.

“Expanding to the Big Apple was definitely a match made in heaven, thanks to the wealth of partners we’ve been able to work with. In New York, our core partner is City Harvest, NYC’s largest food rescue organization, who will distribute 61 million pounds of food across the city this year, almost half of which will be produce. Brighter Bites is able to select donations from their incredible inventory to send to our school locations. New York City is also the largest school district in the country with over 1.1 million students and 1,700 schools. By programming here, Brighter Bites has an opportunity to impact thousands of families over the next few years as we build a community of health across the five boroughs.

“Of course, our families are our most important partners, without whom we could not work. Our support from parent volunteers has been incredible, with some sites clocking in at 90+ volunteers each week in what may be an unofficial Brighter Bites record. Our program truly takes a village and we simply couldn’t do it without the support of all these individuals and organizations.

“D’Arrigo is the cherry on top of our produce – literally! I will never forget the multiple pallets of cherries they sent during our first few weeks of programming during the summer of 2017, leading our families to call distribution days ‘Fruity Fridays.’ As we’ve grown in NYC, they continue to support our program by sending weekly donations of perishable, high-value items such as plums, bell peppers, and berries that are traditionally harder for our food bank partners to source. We are so grateful for the generosity of D’Arrigo which allows our families to receive an exciting mix of fruits and veggies each week!”

Of course, our NYC program wouldn’t be the same without its leader and program director, Melanie Button. Read our spotlight on Melanie here!

Brighter Bites NYC Program Director Melanie Button and City Harvest driver Ade McCoy

Melanie is supported by Program Coordinator KayJoon Quispe, Program Associates Judy Hsu, Amina Khawja, and Brianne Ross, and an amazing group of interns and dedicated students (read about them here). The team operates Brighter Bites at five public schools in Queens. Check out which ones here.

Program Coordinator KayJoon Quispe

Group photo of staff holiday luncheon at WeWork. L to R back row: PD Melanie Button, PA Judy Hsu, PA Brianne Ross, PA Amina Khawja, Lisa Helfman, Intern Christopher Jackson, Front Row: City Harvest warehouse specialist Kim Conchada, PC Kayjoon Quispe

Many City Harvest staff members have also gone above and beyond to support Brighter Bites. Derrick Smalls is a second generation City Harvest employee and drives the City Harvest truck to deliver all our produce and is truly incredible to work with week after week. Kim Conchada is City Harvest’s volunteer services warehouse specialist. She oversees all our warehouse needs, including assessing produce quality to ensure we have the right tip-sheets and nutrition materials in our bags each week. Every week she leads a team of four to five volunteers in building custom pallets for Brighter Bites schools at City Harvest’s food rescue facility. Usually this means breaking down and re-building 10,000+ lbs. of fruits and veggies!

Derrick Smalls, City Harvest driver, pictured with Program Associate Judy Hsu

Picture L to R: Luis Montoya, Kim Conchada, Patricia Burt, Ivette Fematt, Sharon Wanamaker

Another amazing City Harvest staff member, Comen Ammonds, is a distribution center associate at City Harvest’s Food Rescue Facility, where he is responsible for many tasks, including receiving and storing produce donations, loading and off-loading City Harvest and agency trucks, and repacking of bulk produce. Comen has been one of Brighter Bites’ biggest supporters at City Harvest from the beginning of our partnership and helped train our staff on all things warehouse. He continues to support our weekly pallet builds, ensuring all Brighter Bites families are able to get quality items in their bags each week.

City Harvest Distribution Center Associate Comen Ammonds

With real estate so hard to come by in NYC, our staff opted to office out of a shared WeWork space in the historic Brewster Building, which is also home to JetBlue’s headquarters. JetBlue has volunteered over 10 times and sent close to 100 employees to help bag produce at our schools since July 2018.

JetBlue employees volunteering at a Brighter Bites bagging

We are so excited to continue creating communities of health through fresh produce in NYC. To learn more about how you can volunteer at a Brighter Bites program near you, click here.

Special Contributor: Melanie Button, Program Director, Brighter Bites NYC

New York Produce Show and Conference Donates Produce to Brighter Bites

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Christina Blick -

This year’s four-day New York Produce Show and Conference took place December 10 – 13, just in time for our last few weeks of Brighter Bites programming in NYC for the Fall 2018 season. After the produce show, display items were donated to one of our Queens locations. Many of our families got to try produce items like cauliflower, red bell peppers, garlic, cucumbers, pomegranates, and persimmons for the first time! We’re grateful for the generosity of the New York Produce Show and Conference and our NYC partners City Harvest and D’Arrigo Bros. Co. Read all about the produce show’s donation to Brighter Bites here.

Garlic, cauliflower, and red bell peppers, arranged to make an American flag, were all donated to Brighter Bites after the 2018 New York Produce Show and Conference