In maybe their highest-profile collaboration to this point, Farmlink just lately partnered with Erewhon, town’s premier luxurious grocery retailer additionally recognized for its movie star smoothie partnerships. Throughout the first week of April, buyers might select to spherical as much as the following greenback, all proceeds going to Farmlink. Whereas each greenback earned allowed the group to rescue 46 lbs. of meals, Collier didn’t see the Erewhon collaboration as a lot of a fundraising try, however reasonably a beneficial probability to make themselves recognized to Los Angeles’s influential denizens.
“I don’t assume the quantity of {dollars} that Erewhon raises for this will probably be headline-worthy. I believe that the hassle to make use of their affect over communities to create extra space to amplify impactful work like Farmlink’s is a very good thing to advertise and encourage,” he says. “Erewhon is in entrance of such an necessary viewers—the kind of folks which are purchasing at Erewhon have the affect to create social shifts in perspective.”
One side of meals insecurity that Collier is making an attempt to fight is the social stigma surrounding it. “Whether or not you purchase a bottle of water or drink without spending a dime from a water fountain, neither expertise is extra dignified than the opposite, however with meals, it’s a very totally different dialog,” he says. “Fifty p.c of individuals which are meals insecure, and know the place their native meals financial institution is, will nonetheless not go, as a result of there’s such a stigma related to that.” Collier is hopeful that partnering with such a high-profile (and excessive price ticket) grocer can even assist shift attitudes round meals insecurity. “I believe that partnerships like Erewhon, [who] are lending their platform to Farmlink, that’s how we’re gonna take advantage of progress and normalizing this work and serving to folks perceive the nuance inside our meals system,” he says.
Erewhon isn’t the one main participant who’s taken discover of Farmlink’s efforts. The nonprofit has gotten a serving to hand from the likes of Metallica, self-help writer Tony Robbins, and Chipotle. Collier credit the eye they’ve acquired to their feel-good origin story: a gaggle of faculty youngsters who, because the world shut down, sprung into motion.
Collier remembers studying a narrative within the New York Occasions about an onion farmer caught with 2 million kilos of onions. “He mentioned, ‘When you bought a truck right here, you’ll be able to take no matter you’ll be able to.’ We pulled collectively $900 and that was sufficient to pay a truck driver to go choose up 40,000 kilos of onions and produce them again to an area meals financial institution. The following day, we needed to have our co-founders, James [Kanoff] and Aidan [Reilly] lease a U-Haul and choose up 11,000 eggs from a farmer close to them and drive again down the 405 and drop these off at a meals financial institution in Santa Monica,” he says. “And that was the beginning.”
