Masbia In Patch: Forest Hills Pantry Expands Food Delivery Program With DoorDash

Posted on: March 7, 2022

A non-profit soup kitchen and food pantry is upping its delivery services across Brooklyn and Queens with the help of DoorDash.

Workers at the food delivery service dropped off nearly 2,500 grocery packages last month on behalf of Masbia, a kosher-certified food access program with two outposts in Brooklyn and one in Forest Hills.

The partnership, which kicked off in February, is continuing, with plans for DoorDash to make over 1,000 weekly deliveries on behalf of families that Masbia serves, the groups said.

“We have seen firsthand the challenges to meeting the growing need for getting food to our neighbors in need — especially by providing dignity to people by eliminating their breadline experience one family at a time,” said Masbia executive director Alexander Rapaport, alluding to long food pantry lines that got even longer amid the pandemic as the city’s hunger crisis worsened (and has still not abated).

In addition to its on-site meals, Masbia hands out free, take-home food packages from its three outposts daily, but DoorDash deliveries enable people to get groceries at home.

The food pantry uploads deliveries for their clients online, and DoorDash workers get the food to their homes, according to a DoorDash spokesperson, who added that anyone interested in the services should contact Masbia.

“This partnership is part of our ongoing work to broaden food access through Project DASH and underscores the importance of businesses and community leaders coming together to break down barriers and meet our most vulnerable neighbors where they are,” said Sascha Owen, senior manager of government relations at DoorDash.

Project DASH is DoorDash’s social-impact project where it partners with different food banks and organizations to address local food access issues.

In the case of its partnership with Masbia, DoorDash is helping ensure the delivery of kosher groceries and meals for Jewish families across Brooklyn and Queens who might otherwise struggle to find food that meets their dietary needs.

Masbia is the only kosher-certified soup kitchen in America that is open to the public daily, it says, but its services are open to anyone, especially since Brooklyn and Queens are among the boroughs with the largest populations facing food insecurity, data shows.

“DoorDash is proud to partner with Masbia, an organization that New Yorkers in need have been able to rely on for over a decade, to power the delivery of groceries and kosher food,” added Owen.

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