The Need

Since the formation of the Burlington Food Bank in 1991, requests from the community for our assistance has risen. No one plans to need the Food Bank, but due to a number factors including: Covid-19, the rising cost of living, an increase in housing costs, unexpected lay-offs, or low-income work, and inflation, that need has grown dramatically.

But time and time again the community has met the need head on. We have seen outstanding amounts of generosity from Burlington residence who give their time, money and expertise to make sure that we can provide nutritious food to the hungry of our community in a dignified and timely manner.

How We Help

The Burlington Food Bank provides food to those in need throughout the city. Our role in the community is to collect, purchase, grow, and distribute food directly to families in Burlington that need a little help. A client can visit our food bank once every three weeks and we provide between seven and ten days’ worth of food and hygiene products. We also provide baby items, such as diapers, formula and baby food to new parents.

We Grow Food

The Burlington Food Bank not only works with local farmers and accepts fresh produce donations, but we also grow food.

We Collect Food

The Burlington Food Bank collects food in many different ways. Our main collection method is through our bins at grocery stores across the city.

We Purchase Food

The Burlington Food Bank spends roughly $250,000 a year on food to ensure we are able to keep up with demand.

We Sort Food

Once food is received from the community and our corporate and food industry partners, it is sorted into roughly 20 different categories.

We Distribute Food

After food is sorted, it is provided to families at our store and distributed to our partners as needed.

Growing Food

The Burlington Food Bank not only works with local farmers and accepts fresh produce donations, but we also grow fresh produce on our seven Community Garden plots that are located in The City of Burlington Community Garden on Maple Ave. We are looking for people to help consistently with watering and weeding all spring/summer. We will also be planting out some transplants and direct seeding in the Spring and could have some help with that too. if you’re interested in helping with this. We are very excited to be able to provide fresh community-garden-grown food to our clients again. We would like to thank our previous volunteer Coordinators that graciously helped out the Burlington Food Bank and families in our community and managed the gardens for the full season.

Collecting Food

When you donate food to the Burlington Food Bank at a drop-off location, we then collect it and bring it back to our warehouse to be sorted by volunteers and provided directly to our clients.

Along with reclamation and recovery of fresh fruits and vegetables through local grocers, we also work with a large number of grocery stores to recover high-quality meat. The stores take top-grade meat and freeze it before the expiry date. We collect these items every week and provide them to our clients as well.

Purchasing Food

We rely on our donors financial contributions to ensure we can keep up with demand and make certain we are providing a variety of nutritious and balanced options. We encourage healthy donations to be lower fat, sodium, and sugar content, and increased protein and fibre. We purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, milk and eggs every month to provide to our families. We also purchase safe school snacks for the large number of children we assist every month. Because we have seen an increase in the number of Burlington residents needing our assistance we have an ever changing need for different food and hygiene items. Your financial donations allow us to purchase what we need, when we need it!

Sorting Food

Our dedicated volunteers have helped us by giving hope to those living with hunger in Burlington. We could not function at the Burlington Food Bank without our volunteers. Over 100 community volunteers have committed thousands of hours every year, since 1991, helping us to fight hunger and feed hope in Burlington.

Distributing Food

Food donations are picked up each day by our Burlington Food Bank truck and volunteers. If you’re in need of food, you can drop into our Food Bank and get assistance during our normal operating hours of Monday to Friday 9am-11:45am and Thursday evenings 5-7pm. The Burlington Food Bank provides food for agencies ranging from other local Food Banks and distributors to smaller community food cupboards and our local community dinners. We work hard every day to give the food we distribute to hungry people throughout our city directly to those in need and through all of these caring organizations.