Waste Not, Want Not
Food Distribution With Fair Foods
By Ethan N. Mansur

Never seeing the people she helps doesn’t bother her. Every Monday morning at 8 a.m., Anna Palladino, 19, delivers close to 300 pounds of food to Pilgrim Church in Dorchester. It takes her about 45 minutes to drive from school to Fair Foods, located a mile or two from the church, where she and two other volunteers from Boston University help load plastic bread racks into their van.

Listening to Nancy Jamison, the founder and director of Fair Foods, barking orders is how Palladino starts every week. But she always comes. “I mean, why not? Right now I would probably be sleeping, but I’m out here helping people,” she said. By the time the food is passed out to the homeless, Palladino will be back in her dorm room napping.

Palladino is only one of 50 volunteers that make a two-hour commitment every week to Student Food Rescue at BU. With 17 food runs a week to Fair Foods Inc., local restaurants, supermarkets and bakeries, BU volunteers transport 3,500 pounds of food weekly during the school year, supplying the Boston Family Shelter, Allston-Brighton Food Pantry, Rosie’s Place, New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans, and many others.

But that’s just peanuts. Fair Foods distributes 160,000 pounds weekly, give or take a few truckloads. That’s the weight of 16 elephants. Nearly every day, a driver makes two trips to Chelsea Market, one of the many food distribution centers visited by Fair Foods, and returns with 16 pallets of surplus food. It’s not out of date, nor rotten, nor spoiled, nor bruised, nor in damaged packaging; it is simply left over, a remainder in a supply and demand equation. Fair Foods distributes 5 million pounds of food a year, making it the largest perishable food rescue organization in Massachusetts.

Donating the surplus to Fair Foods is a good deal for the owners of Chelsea Market; they don’t have to pay to dump it and they receive a tax write-off. But it’s still a bummer for Jamison. She can only save one-fifth of the food thrown away. “We need more trucks,” she said.

In the Fair Foods warehouse, everything is either coming or going. Trucks back up to the loading dock. Cars and vans back up to the door. Food rolls in and out all day under the careful eye of Jamison, who runs her warehouse like a mix between a mother and a drill sergeant. She can’t afford a full staff and has few consistent workers—98 percent are people volunteering or fulfilling a community service requirement. But the work needs to get done.

Sometimes, mistakes are made. Last week in the warehouse one of Jamison’s employees accepted two pallets of coleslaw while she was out. “I can’t get rid of this,” Jamison said. “This is what happens when people make decisions for me.” The culprit, a kid she fondly calls “Hippie,” carried the heavy boxes outside while another employee, Eric Camarata, stood in the dumpster stacking the wasted coleslaw neatly so that all of the boxes could fit. Jamison stood in the doorway giving “Hippie” a hard time and passing around advice.

“I have an old friend Vernon, a Vietnam veteran, and I’ve learned a lot from him. He says you can’t go to war and win every battle,” she said.

Jamison often asks her workers what the hell they are doing. She shouts. She goads. If a job isn’t done right, you know somebody’s going to hear about it. Each loaf must be checked for mold or holes nibbled by rats. Each tomato or potato, apple or banana, onion or carrot, squash or cabbage or head of lettuce must be checked for bad spots before it goes out. There is something endearing about Jamison, something charismatic, that lets her get away with being so bossy. To most of her commands, and even most of her insults, Jamison’s workers respond with a wry smile.

The word “character” comes up often when people talk about Jamison, as well as the word “inspiration.” She illustrates her ideas with lively anecdotes about the people she has helped over the years; she reels off facts like a political commentator; she also likes to catch you off guard by dropping the “F” word right in the middle of a heartfelt story or while arguing a philosophical point.

“I’ve lived in Dorchester a long time now,” she said. “Every time I drive home I see how people live here and it makes me sad. Mothers can’t feed their kids—that’s wrong.” In the beginning, she and a few of her neighbors would drive down to the Chelsea Market in the early morning and cram their beat-up vehicles with as much food from the dumpsters as they could before being chased away by security guards. Receiving permission to take the food, which took years of badgering, was a big step. Moving the organization into a couple of trailers on an empty piece of land was another big step; she ran it out of those trailers for 14 years. Fair Foods has only been in their present warehouse since 2002. Over time, Jamison has created a stunningly successful non-profit organization that feeds people all over the Boston area.

It takes dedication to make it all happen. Jamison, her right hand man Eric Camarata, and a few other full-time employees work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Camarata, 20, dropped out of BU and moved to Dorchester a year ago to work for Fair Foods after visiting on a community service trip. Nowadays he handles most of the paperwork, sitting at a desk on the second floor surrounded by schedules (there seems to be schedules all over the warehouse), receipts, binders and folders. “But I still get to climb in the dumpster at least once a week,” said Camarata. Filing cabinets line an entire wall of the office—each jam-packed with slips indicating how much food went where, and on what date.

Fair Foods distributes surplus food in three ways: at community events, such as Walk For Hunger, Walk for Homelessness, Stand Up for Children, Boys and Girls Club Fair; through non-profit hunger and poverty organizations, such as local food pantries, SHARE New England, Bowdoin Street Health Center, the Greater Boston Food Bank; and at the over 50 Dollar-A-Bag sites located in low-income areas.

Anyone can drop by a Dollar-a-Bag site and receive 15 pounds of groceries. No welfare papers necessary. Jamison thinks that presenting proof of need is embarrassing. The difference between a dollar and free may seem small, but not to Jamison. “This way there is dignity in it.” One such dollar bag (actually a box) contained a loaf of Arnold Country Wheat, a loaf of Arnold Brick Oven, a loaf of Friehofer’s Country White, an Entenmann’s Cheese Danish, a package of Thomas’s English Muffins, a bag of Lender’s Bagels. That adds up to $17.85 if you were to buy it in a store. There are Dollar-a-Bag sites in Boston, Dorchester, South Boston, Gloucester, Milton, Cambridge, Somerville, East Boston, Mattapan, Winthrop, Quincy, South End, Jamaica Plain and Roslindale.

Fair Foods has become a part of many communities. “Some people wouldn’t eat if it weren’t for Fair Foods,” said Judie Dupass, 72, at the Dudley St. Dollar-a-Bag site in Roxbury. She has relied on Fair Foods for 20 years. Every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. a group of 25 to 50 people crowd around the back of two trucks. Some need to be told to wait their turn, but most are patient, smiling and joking with their neighbors while they wait to pick out their share. “This food is a big help, especially if you have kids,” said Michelle O’Clair, a resident of Roxbury and mother of three.

Fair Foods depends on volunteers to get the work done each week—including some 200 people to run the Dollar-a-Bag sites—but some are more helpful than others. “BU is here every week. I can’t say that about other [college] groups,” said Jamison. Take the Stop Hunger Program at Harvard. The volunteers came once last year: rode the Red Line from Harvard Square to the Field’s Corner, worked two hours, had lunch, worked another two hours, took pictures, went home.

Many groups visit Fair Foods in such a manner, according to Camarata. “I think Nancy said it well when she called it ‘the Band Aid solution.’” He doesn’t like it when people come in and throw around words like “urban revitalization,” or “activism.”

Still, Harvard has showed their generosity in other ways. Last June, Fair Foods scored a few truckloads of industrial kitchen equipment—giant stainless steel kettles, an 80-quart bread mixer, a buffalo chopper (used on vegetables, not animals), and convection ovens—from the Radcliffe Quad Cafeteria, which Jamison parceled out to non-profit organizations associated with Fair Foods throughout the city.

Fair Foods is a success because they are helping people on the street level. It’s not about charity; it’s about hard work. “People are hungry every day of the week,” said Jamison. The 10 and 12 hours days get long, even to an idealist, but Jamison’s reward is the people who come in every day to pick up food. Seeing the people she helps is what makes it worth it.

Other articles by Ethan N. Mansur.

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