A partnership Freestore Foodbank has with Amazon for home food delivery is going so well it may expand.
CEO Kurt Reiber talked about the program, and a new distribution center set to open in March, at a Northern Kentucky Chamber event Tuesday.
Reiber says the home delivery program began last year. It serves those who live within the I-275 loop.
"In conjunction with Amazon delivery, their Amazon drivers will come and pick up the food boxes and our produce boxes at our food distribution center and they will distribute them to folks who identify as immune compromised or they have a barrier as far as transportation," he says.
Five-hundred people are part of the pilot right now.
The Freestore Foodbank is also preparing to open a new distribution and workforce training center on River Road that WVXU told you about in 2021.
Reiber explains the organization is now distributing 50 million meals a year to a 20-county area. The new center will double that capacity.
"This new building will allow us to distribute over 100 million meals and that's going to go a long way towards helping families stabilize their lives and also make a difference in their communities," he says.
It will also train people enrolled in its Cincinnati COOKS program and LIFT the TriState, its logistics program.
"We are a logistic hotbed, so being able to train people in logistics, our partnership with Gateway Community and Technical College, is really critical when you really think about that," he says. "Because we're marrying hands-on experiences in the warehouse with academic credentials."
The new 225,000-square foot building combines the current distribution centers at Wilder and Mayerson to a more centralized area.
