Mobile pantry reinvents the food drive
If I could pitch a script for a TV show, I’d call it “Phil the Truck.”
The star: Phil, a 32-food bread truck transformed into a mobile food pantry.
Opening credits: A flashback to how the April 4, 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired one of his fellow seminarians to launch Personto-Person in Darien to help those in need while educating the community about social injustice. Fast forward to present time as a mobile food pantry dubbed with the inviting pun “Phil the Truck” brings food to the hungry.
Setting: Following Phil on regular stops in Stamford, epicenter of one of the broadest wealth gaps in the nation.
Episode synopsis: Phil makes his introduction on Lockwood Avenue in Stamford. A woman leans out a window bellowing “Who are you? Are you ICE?” P2P volunteers explain how she can get food. The exchange continues through the summer until she finally exits the building, climbs aboard Phil and picks up avocados. On Phil’s next visit the woman brings volunteers a plate of guacamole and chips. On the same day, a man in torn clothes sips water from afar. Volunteers approach him and explain their mission. The man sits and weeps.
This show is nonfiction. As Rick Nixon, Stamford site manager and food center manager for P2P, recalls the man’s tears, he is unable to contain his own. “I live in Darien, I never see that,” he says.
Until Phil changed the plot a year ago, Stamford clients walked, rode buses or caught rides to cross the city border to visit the Darien pantry. After November 2016, the numbers started dropping. It wasn’t a hopeful indicator.
“The current administration in Washington isn’t particularly friendly to the people we serve. And driving down the street in Darien is kind of a scary thing to do in that environment,” Nixon says. “You might find yourself pulled over and deported back to your home country in 48 hours.”
Nixon and other members of the P2P team don’t dwell on politics, but marvel at lessons they glean as participants in a living sociology class.
“The guy in the BMW is all upset because he can’t get through the traffic and the woman who has nothing with seven children and no way to feed them is laughing. So that’s amazing,” Nixon says.
A mobile office at the front of the truck enables a social worker to assist families, occasionally guiding them to other agencies. A few steps away, shelves are methodically organized with fruits, vegetables, grains and more. Small stickers with 16 numbers serve as scorecards of how much food families of various sizes can pick up on each visit, the recommendations of a nutritionist.
Families have access once a month. In one year, the typical family averaged 3.83 visits as Phil served 224,617 meals.
“That tells you, no one wants to come to a food pantry,” reasons P2P CEO Ceci Maher, who will retire June 28. “They come because they’re hungry.”
A lot of the heroes in the storyline are wealthy. Phil the Truck was donated by the foundation of Greenwich hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen and his wife, Alexandra.
The truck not only delivers food, but the message of poverty among neighbors. After a recent visit to Greenwich Country Day, P2P members were impressed by the scope of donations, but school officials apologized, saying “We can do much better than this.”
P2P buys generic brands because they’re cheaper, but find that clients respond to donations with familiar labels designed to instill trust in consumers.
For most clients, fresh fruits and vegetables are the most trusted brands. For some, canned goods are a mystery, a vestige of fading American shopping trends.
Plastic bags will soon belong to a different era as well. With municipal laws banning them, there is an urgency to collect donations of reusable bags. Residents in towns with spring drives would do well to place food in reusable totes.
Changing times also enable volunteers to assist homebound clients who review Phil’s offerings via FaceTime. Because donations from the public are unpredictable, there are occasional treasures among traditional offerings. Volunteer Gail Lauro recalls a mother becoming emotional over a box of cake mix, saying “today is my son’s birthday and I didn’t know how I was going to bake a cake.”
P2P staff members harbor wishes to expand in the form of a second food truck to serve Bridgeport, or one to deliver donated clothes.
“Phil doesn’t mean we are hitting everyone who is hungry,” Maher told supporters at a birthday party for Phil on Wednesday. “Kids can’t go to school hungry. They can’t play sports hungry. They can’t learn hungry. And the parents can’t restrain their temper when they are hungry and they go without. And that’s not OK.”
“Phil the Truck” is a star. But he could use a supporting cast.
“Kids can’t go to school hungry. They can’t play sports hungry. They can’t learn hungry . ... And that’s not OK.”
Ceci Maher, Person-to-Person CEO