Food Service Guidelines

Since 2018, Bronx Health REACH has been promoting food service guidelines for charitable food systems and federal facilities to increase access to fresh, healthy, and local food options at meal serving sites and food pantries.

The partners include:

• Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center (MMC), partnering with Lenox Hill Teaching Kitchen introduced new, healthier recipes for the meals served in their afterschool program. MMC involves its teen Food Justice Club members to encourage acceptance of healthier foods through cooking demos, among other things, with the younger children.
• Lehman College, the City University of New York’s only four-year college in the Bronx, adopted federal food service guidelines at two of their campuses.

Bronx Health REACH trains and provides technical assistance to food pantries.

The training focuses on the efficient running of food pantries, establishing Healthy Eating Research (HER) guidelines, the procurement and promotion of healthier food, and creating a food environment that makes healthier choices easier for clients. It was designed and developed in partnership with Community Connections NYC; which has extensive experience working with food pantries and food banks in New York City. To date, four organizations  have been trained, successfully implementing the Client Choice Model, where, unlike traditional food pantries, the client selects his/her own food. This model promotes healthier food choices, waste reduction and an environment of dignity and respect.

Bronx Health REACH  trained six food pantries on implementing and managing Plentiful; an internet-based customer relationship management software (CRM) which allows food pantries to create a database of their clients, schedule pantry visits and send out client reservations/confirmations in 9 different languages.

Bronx Health REACH also works with food pantries to determine their clients’ cultural food preferences and incorporate the findings into the food they offer.

For more information about our Healthy Pantry Initiative, email Rachel Ingram, Senior Program Manager at ringram@insitute.org or Immaculada Moronta, Program Coordinator, at imoronta@institute.org.