WHITEFISH — The North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish has been a constant resource for people experiencing food insecurity for decades.
In recent years they noticed a growing trend that more and more of their customers were facing housing insecurity or even homelessness.
“We’ve had lots of families you know living in a hotel or living in their car and who haven’t had access to a kitchen to make meals for their families, and just to have a nutritious meal that’s made with so much love, I think goes a long way,” said North Valley Food Bank AmeriCorps Vista Savannah Lust.
It’s an innovative new approach to food access for those experiencing housing insecurity in Northwest Montana.
“Just getting them something that they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, pop it open, some of them require a microwave, some of them don’t,” said North Valley Food Bank Culinary Arts Manager Rachael Broom.
The North Valley Food Bank started its Ready-to-Eat-Meal Program in November of 2023. One year later, they’re distributing more than 1,000 of the meals a month.
“We have people from so many different situations, so we have the influx of unhoused population or people just don’t have access to a good kitchen, so they need that ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meal that’s just really easy," Broom explained.
Broom and her team create the meals using local produce and rescue food from local grocery stores. Rescue food is often high-quality food that would otherwise be thrown away because it doesn’t meet retail appearance standards.
“And we turn it into you know soups, sandwiches, whatever, trying to capture the nutrition of the food, then it goes one step further before it gets to compost, so one extra meal out of something that somebody would have otherwise thrown away,” Broom told MTN.
The meals change each week and include breakfast and dinner options.
“They’re healthy, organic, high in protein, low like no added sugar, really whole ingredients,” said Lust.
Broom said the meals are also helping families outside of the food bank.
The North Valley Food Bank has partnered with local schools to help feed children in need and also works with the postpartum research group “Meals for Moms program.
“I’m a mom and that time of my life I didn’t even want to cook, so getting meals directly to these moms with this program so that they have something easy to put on the table, and their feeding their families and they’re getting good nutrition, that’s been really awesome,” said Broom.
