Cultivate Food Rescue celebrated the groundbreaking for their new cold storage facility on Aug. 1, which has been in the works for almost two years. Over 70 people attended the ceremonial groundbreaking of the 21,000-square-foot addition.
Jim Conklin, Executive Director of Cultivate Food Rescue says that it’s an amazing moment, “it’s a little surreal, but it’s really to help people in need in our community.”
The new cold storage unit will be used alongside the current building they’re already in on Prairie Street in South Bend, “it’s about two-thirds-freezer and one-third refrigerator.”
Conklin says that they got support and funding from the city and other sources, “the City of South Bend has been amazing to work with. They sold us the land at a heavily discounted price,” he says, “St. Joe County actually distributed some American Rescue Plan Dollars
and made a gift to us of one million dollars.”
Cultivate Food Rescue will be able to rescue 19 million pounds of food every year. Mayor James Mueller says that’s a major achievement, “it’s great to see the community come together and make sure that there is no neighbor hungry and no food wasted here in South Bend.”
Children are one of the main groups in need food, says State Representative, Rudy Yakym, “Cultivate Food Rescue really pulls a lot of people together to take food that would normally go to waste and put it in the mouths of hungry children.”
The new cold storage facility is expected to take ten months to complete. Conklin says that he hopes to be done by “May of 2024. We’ll be moving in and bring more food into the community to help our hungry neighbors.”
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