City Market Partners to Launch Monthly Dinners at Food Shelf

Co-op works with Food Shelf and Sysco Albany to initiate weeknight meals

City Market has partnered with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf for decades, and the Co-op enhanced that partnership in 2002 when it moved to the Downtown location. For example, City Market Members can volunteer at the Food Shelf and earn discounts on their groceries. Last year Members volunteered almost 18,000 hours with the Co-op’s Community Outreach Partners, like the Food Shelf. Customers participate in the Co-op’s daily Rally for Change Program and round up at the registers to donate their change to non-profits. Last year through this program, customers donated almost $150,000 directly to the Food Shelf. Recently, the Food Shelf started placing wholesale bulk food orders through the Co-op’s vendors and using money that the Co-op has donated for this specific purpose.

City Market’s new partnership augments the Food Shelf’s existing Monday through Friday and Sunday breakfast service. Starting Monday, June 10, one Monday of each month, City Market staff and volunteers will offer dinner at the Food Shelf from 5pm-7pm. City Market’s Executive Chef, Michael Clauss, initiated the idea as part of the Co-op’s ongoing donations of food from the Co-op’s food buffets each night. The majority of the food will be gleaned from that week’s food bar menu as the Co-op looks to continuously improve upon its partnership with the Food Shelf and also lessen food waste. Clauss was able to form an additional partnership with the Co-op’s vendor Sysco Albany. Sysco Albany will be matching City Market’s donations for this monthly Monday dinner program. In the near future, Clauss anticipates inviting other area chefs to participate in the monthly dinners in the hopes that it will expand to additional weeknight evenings.

John Tashiro, City Market’s General Manager, says, “The Co-op is excited to find new ways to support the great work of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf and enhance our close partnership. These new monthly dinners are a great example of how the Co-op’s Executive Chef Michael Clauss and the Food Shelf’s Kitchen Manager, Midhat Hadzic, have started to collaborate. Sysco Albany’s partnership and additional funding will ensure that we have the supplies needed to support our neighbors through this new program.”

About City Market/Onion River Co-op: The Onion River Co-op is a consumer cooperative, with almost 13,000 Members, selling wholesome food and other products while building a vibrant, empowered community and a healthier world, all in a sustainable manner. Now with two stores, in Downtown and the South End of Burlington, Vermont, City Market provides a large selection of local, organic, and conventional foods and thousands of Vermont-made products. Visit City Market, Onion River Co-op online at www.CityMarket.coop.