I have mentioned in previous posts that I help with a free community dinner once a month and am involved with our local food pantry. We get a lot of our meat from Feeding America, which is a nonprofit food gleaning organization. They collect food from major distributors (think Walmart, Sams, and in our area Meijer) and dispense it to pantries, meal programs, and other nonprofits.
It works out well. The food retailers freeze the meat just prior to the sell-by date and get a nice tax break to make donating worth their while. Feeding America then makes the food available to the pantries for .12 to .18 cents a pound. The fee is not for the donated product, but to cover the overhead to keep the organization going. The price varience depends on where the donated food came from or in some cases what the item is. The rule of thumb for our area is USDA surplus food .12, regular donations .16, and meat .18 cents. When I go to pick up meat I never know what they will have in stock or how much of it. They usually have on hand a lot of miscellanious cuts but not a lot of any one thing.
Last friday I hit the Jackpot. I picked up: 2 beef briskets totaling 28 lbs., a 12 lb pork butt, and over 40 lbs. of chicken drumsticks. In ten years I have never seen brisket there before. With a few other things I picked up, the total order was a little over 100 lbs. and the bill was under $20. I was very excited, and so are a few of the other cooks (especially the guy who just got back from Texas)! I am thinking brisket and pulled pork sliders, along with drumsticks on the menu for our June meal.
