Goodwill Ends Food Pantry, Shifts To Prepared Meals For Pickup

<p><a href="mailto:allenre@interlochen.org"><em>By Bob Allen</em></a></p> <p>The Goodwill Inn in Traverse City is replacing its food pantry with prepared meals. The plan is to prepare nutritious meals and freeze them on sealed trays that can be taken home and heated up.</p> <p>They will be available 24 hours a day and prepared from scratch in the Goodwill kitchen.</p> <p>Food manager Brandon Seng came up with the idea. He says the pantry wasn't equipped to store a lot of fresh food before it began to spoil. But Goodwill does already have a large, well-equipped kitchen.</p> <p>"We're able to capture those products before spoilage, process them down into a healthy, nutrient dense meal for a hungry family and freeze it, adding six months of life onto that food item.," he says.</p> <p>Seng says a trial run turned out 200 meals in about three hours.</p> <p>"We did scalloped potatoes and ham and green beans with toasted almonds and balsamic," he says. "With our set-up and our infrastructure there, there's no reason for anybody to ever go hungry in Traverse City."</p> <p>The food, donated to Northwest Food Rescue, comes from grocery stores, restaurants and farms.</p> <p>The meals at Goodwill start May 1st.</p>