Food Distribution
Delivering to All Five Boroughs
Together with our network of 400 food pantries, soup kitchens, community food distributions, and other program partners across the city, we are working hard to provide free, nutritious food to the nearly 3 million New Yorkers who are struggling to make ends meet amid rising costs for food and other necessities, as well as ongoing economic uncertainty.
Since our founding more than 40 years ago, City Harvest has rescued more than one billion pounds of surplus food that would have otherwise gone to waste and delivered it, free of charge, to our partner food pantries and soup kitchens, Community Partner Distributions, and our Mobile Markets® to help feed New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity. We distribute food in all five boroughs, with an emphasis on neighborhoods that are striving to overcome historic disinvestment and areas that have limited access to fresh, affordable food.
Donate today to help City Harvest provide food to our NYC neighbors in need.
Where does the food go?
Our Agency Partners
Our fleet of trucks makes daily deliveries to 400 food pantries, soup kitchens, and other community food programs across all five boroughs of New York City. We focus on delivering the right food to the right place at the right time by working with partners in New York City’s most underserved neighborhoods. To further support our partner agencies, we provide grants, trainings, and leadership resources, allowing our partners to build capacity and better serve the needs of their communities.
Mobile Markets®
We provide over 3 million pounds of fresh produce, free of charge, every year to nearly 10,000 New York City households through our outdoor farmers’ market-style distributions of fresh produce that we call Mobile Markets®. These Mobile Markets are strategically placed in neighborhoods with limited access to affordable, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Community Partner Distributions
We’ve expanded our successful Mobile Market® model to reach more communities across the five boroughs by helping community organizations run Community Partner Distributions in neighborhoods that lack food pantries and where there is limited access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables.
Produce Pals
City Harvest Produce Pals combines nutrition and culinary education with free produce distribution, ensuring that families have both the skills and the ingredients to prepare delicious, affordable meals. At some partnering New York City schools where we provide nutrition and culinary education programming, City Harvest distributes free bags of nutritious, versatile produce to students and their families once a month.
In a city where 1 in 4 children does not always know where their next meal is coming from, Produce Pals makes food distribution as convenient as possible for families so that students have access to the nutritious foods they need to thrive.
Meeting Cultural and Religious Dietary Needs
City Harvest works to ensure that New Yorkers have access to culturally appropriate and religiously required foods, including through our kosher and halal food rescue programs.
Our kosher food rescue program addresses the dietary needs of the more than 500,000 Jewish New Yorkers living below or near the poverty line. Since 1999, we have collected more than 106 million pounds of kosher food and delivered it to kosher community food programs across the city. This year, we plan to rescue and distribute 7.9 million pounds of food, including fresh produce and kosher meat, to 24 kosher community food programs across the city.
We also partner with several agencies serving large halal-observant communities. This year, we plan to rescue and distribute more than 1.9 million pounds of food, including fresh produce and halal meat, to seven halal food programs across New York City. Since its founding in 2021, our halal program has collected and distributed over 12 million pounds of fresh produce and halal meats to partners across the city.
