Vulnerable Community Members Need More than Food

We are proud to have served a meal every single night for over thirty years. But, the truth is that vulnerable community members have many needs beyond food.

Consistency Enables Trust

The consistency of our nightly meal service enables us to get to know and build trust with our guests. This allows us to discuss available service options and guide them to programs that best match their individual preferences and needs.

Collaborating with Social Service Agencies

The connections we build strengthen the interwoven threads necessary to build resilient, helpful and effective communities.

We form relationships with fellow nonprofits and city/county service providers who are able to help our guests address these additional needs, such as:

• Medical Care
• Housing
• Employment
• Mental Health Services
• Substance Abuse Treatment

Food Rescue and Our Community Exchange

Every day we work closely with food donors to rescue good food that would otherwise be thrown away.

We rescue food from:

• Major Grocery Stores
• Bakeries and Coffee Shops
• Restaurants
• Farmer’s Markets
• Catering Companies
• Film and TV Studios and Film Shoots
• Folks who stop at our door to drop off their homegrown fruit & vegetables, boxes of pasta, bags of rice, or canned goods they’ve raised by going door to door in their neighborhood.

As Community Builders, we work with potential donors and volunteers to make it easier to donate food. We are delighted to help people brainstorm ways to rescue, donate, and access food. Get in touch, Email  or call (323) 347-7907

Community Exchange Food Beneficiaries

Our Community Exchange is a free concierge food sharing program. It fills a vital niche for our small and midsize nonprofit collaborators. Our program provides them with healthy food at no cost, allowing them to direct funds to other critical guest needs.

Our Food Resources Help Nonprofits Minimize Food Costs

Smaller and midsize nonprofits demonstrate better guest outcomes when they are able to provide high quality nutritious meals, but they consistently struggle to access fresh, nutritious food within their own limited resources.  We fill in this gap.

Our collaborators provide supportive services to:

• Single mothers escaping from abusive homes
• Disadvantaged senior citizens
• People who have physical and/or mental disabilities
• People who fight drug and alcohol addiction
• Kids living on the streets

Volunteering Builds Community and Resilience

Cooking, organizing, chopping, sorting, distributing, and serving food takes lots of hands. It takes as many as thirty volunteers each day to get it all done. This adds up to thousands of volunteers a year, helping prepare and serve our meal or helping share food through our Community Exchange.

Volunteering Dissolves Boundaries

Those experiencing poverty and homelessness on our streets are highly visible, but their stories are often unknown.  Members of the larger community make assumptions and do not fully understand, and are often profoundly disconnected from, the reality of the lives of their unhoused neighbors.

For many, volunteering at HoFoCo dissolves the boundaries between “us” and “them”.

The true connective tissue of community is based on small, interpersonal connections that happen every day.  Every day our volunteers work to strengthen these connections in small but powerful ways.