Through new Food Hub, Our Neighbors’ Table working towards a food secure region
By Michelle Xiarhos Curran
ECCF Communications Writer
It’s 10:30 on a Tuesday morning and the loading docks at the Seacoast Regional Food Hub on Bridge Road in Salisbury are buzzing with activity. Volunteers are loading pallets of food onto a box truck, which will then be delivered to Sacred Hearts Food Pantry in nearby Haverhill and distributed to the more than 700 households the organization serves each week.
Since it opened in the fall of 2023, the Seacoast Regional Food Hub, operated by nonprofit Our Neighbors’ Table, has dramatically increased the capacity of organizations that make up the Lower Merrimack Valley Food Coalition to feed the region, where more than 32,000 residents lack reliable access to affordable, healthy food.
“We don’t need more organizations getting into the food business,” Lyndsey Haight, executive director of Our Neighbors’ Table, told a group of ECCF friends and fundholders who were touring the impressive facility. “We need to better equip the ones we have.”
And with the completion of the Seacoast Regional Food Hub, Our Neighbors’ Table – which has evolved from a grassroots weekly hot meal provider to a regional leader in food security – is doing just that. The new facility is a “hub” in the truest sense of the word. Spanning 27,000 square feet, it serves as the new headquarters of Our Neighbors’ Table and is a connection point for the region’s food providers, partners and residents.
And it is a prime example of the type of systems thinking needed to solve food security – and the region’s other social challenges too.
A Central Place for Facing Food Insecurity Together
The Seacoast Regional Food Hub’s 13,000 square feet of communal dry and refrigerated storage space, three loading docks and proximity to local need make distributing, accepting and storing food easier and more efficient for food partners in the area.
Local organizations – particularly smaller ones that are often cramming stacks of food piled 10 boxes high into tiny offices and sheds – now have space to store more. They can also accept food that may be offered through rescue or bulk donations from manufacturers: missed opportunities when less storage space was available.
Nonprofits like Nourishing the North Shore – which procures and distributes fresh produce to local pantries – can now easily unload, sort and distribute locally grown vegetables and fruits to multiple organizations, in one central location.
And Our Neighbors’ Table now accepts onsite shipments from the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), the leading supplier of the local non-perishable food supply. This eliminates the need for food partners to rent trucks or to solicit volunteers to drive their own cars to Boston to pick up food.
For the local food system, this all means that valuable resources – particularly time and money – are freed up by these efficiencies and can be redirected towards other critical tasks.
“In addition to local capacity, we’ve freed up hundreds of dock appointments at the Greater Boston Food Bank for other members,” said Haight. GBFB serves more than 600 programs in Eastern Massachusetts on limited dock space in Boston.
The Market and Our Neighbors’ Table Stable Table® Model
In addition to these critical improvements to the local system, the Seacoast Regional Food Hub is also home to a second Our Neighbors’ Table Market, a place where local residents can shop weekly – for free and with privacy and dignity – for the basics they need. (The first market is in Amesbury, where Our Neighbors’ Table was founded.) Aisles of essentials like cereal, rice, pasta, peanut butter and canned goods flow into a bountiful dairy and produce section, filled with colorful fruits and vegetables grown largely by local farmers.
During the ECCF tour, the Market was a hive of activity, with a group of happy volunteers moving quickly between the storage area and aisles, stocking shelves and readying check-out areas, similar to traditional grocery stores.
“We’re really just trying to create a normal experience for folks,” said Haight.
Our Neighbors’ Table has also worked with area Councils on Aging to set up smaller, but similar markets in local senior centers. These facets are all a part of the organization’s Stable Table® model – a community-focused method of creating universal food access across the region.
So too is closing the area’s 50 percent SNAP gap – the difference between those eligible for the federally funded nutrition program and those who are actively enrolled.
Our Neighbors’ Table is a SNAP outreach partner and has a local food advocate on site at the Hub to support residents’ participation in the program. Signing more people up for SNAP could significantly ease the crunch on the local food security system, which continues to experience a steady increase in demand. (Haight said Our Neighbors’ Table is serving 31 percent more people now than it was in 2020.)
Preserving public programs and benefits like SNAP is top of mind for Haight right now. But she also emphasized something that ECCF has also long advocated for – matching local giving with local need.
“It’s local, community engagement that helps us solidify our ‘Stable Table,’” Haight said. “We can’t control national policy, but we can ensure that food is locally accessible. Reliance on local support is going to be more important than ever. And there’s more than enough resources to go around in Essex County.”
ECCF’s visit to Our Neighbors’ Table and the Seacoast Regional Food Hub is part of the foundation’s ongoing efforts to learn alongside our fundholders about the needs in our communities and the nonprofit organizations that are working every day to meet those needs.
“Essex County Community Foundation exists to connect all these dots,” said ECCF President and CEO Stratton Lloyd. “When we connect local need with local giving, we’re beginning to create a community-focused system of support that is meaningful and sustainable.”
“We’re so fortunate to have organizations like yours doing the work that you do,” Lloyd told Haight at the end of ECCF’s visit. “Your work is really inspiring.”
For more information about Our Neighbors’ Table, the Seacoast Regional Food Hub and how you can support their mission to make the Lower Merrimack Valley a food secure region, please visit www.ourneighborstable.org.
