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Urban Food Initiative (Daily Table)

We believe that delicious and wholesome food should be available to all. We help communities make great food choices by making it convenient and affordable to choose tasty and fresh meals and groceries. By partnering with a network of growers, manufacturers, and other suppliers, we source high-quality food at low costs and make it available to everyone in our communities at prices designed for even a SNAP budget.

Our stores provide a selection of fresh produce, grocery staples and made-from-scratch prepared foods at prices low enough to fit within every budget. We believe in providing a shopping experience that fosters a sense of agency around your health (you can afford to eat well!), and the dignity of providing a helping hand, not a handout. We believe in creating livable wage jobs, with a strong preference for hiring directly from our neighborhoods.

COVID-19 Response

As a community grocer, Daily Table has continued to be open and has continued to keep its doors open during the pandemic. Daily Table grocery stores have implemented social distancing policies and have increased sanitation management, as well as allowing more flexibility for workers through additional sick time and supplemented hourly pay. The Daily Table team has also made their stores more accessible for older customers by exclusively allowing individuals over the age of 60 to shop in the store an hour prior to anyone else.

Relevancy

Daily Table is a non-profit community grocer that focuses on providing access to healthy food options in communities that lack the accessibility to fair-priced healthy food options. Daily Table is aware that low-income communities are saturated with empty high calorie options that do not provide the nutrition and value of healthy food. To make the food supplied by the organization affordable, Daily Table boasts a network of growers, manufacturers, and distributors, along with wasted food that is gathered from excess inventory, labeling changes,and short-coded food items that traditional supermarkets won’t sell. In 2019 alone, the Daily Table recovered over 1.4 million pounds of food. The Daily Table’s first funder in 2012 was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. In 2013, the Daily Table partnered with the Codman Square Health Center to open its first store, thus demonstrating the reach of the organization and the knowledge of the environment that it operates within.

Impact

The Daily Table provides a membership based approach to accurately record where the need is bwing met. This is done simply by recording zip codes and email addresses of each customer. In order to ensure that they are making an impact within communities that need it the most, the membership based approach is critical in carrying out the delivery of the mission. The Daily Table asserts that every dollar donated is matched with a two dollar profit at the cash register. This model ensures that the grocer is generating the funding through the delivery of the mission and not for the delivery of the mission.

Sustainability

The Daily Table started in 2015, and since its inception has seen substantial growth over the past five years. In the last three tax filings available online, the Daily Table has increased its revenue from ~$40,000 to nearly $300,000 annually. As a growing organization, they have scaled up their costs to reach programming goals, which has caused some operating variance over the past several years. The Daily Table lists their entire staff, board, and partner organizations and funder on their website.

Excellence in Management and Operations

The Board of Daily Table is composed of individuals who have exceptional experience within the retail food service industry, as well as individuals with knowledge in health and food system networks. A Board of this nature is able to promote the goals of a non-profit community grocer from a business perspective, and from a healthcare perspective. Their Founder and President, Doug Rauch was previously the President of Trader Joes, cementing his knowledge in the industry of which Daily Table operates in.



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