By Aria Jones
With 400 families signed up to receive a free week’s worth of groceries, a line of cars stretched two blocks from the East Dallas Church of Christ on South Carroll Avenue on Saturday morning.
The drive-up event in Old East Dallas, hosted by hunger-relief company Goodr and the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Southern Dallas Thrives initiative, was aimed at helping families cope with increasing prices for food and other necessities. The U.S. Census estimates the poverty rate in Dallas is about 20%.
As she waited in line, Gloria LaBarba, a mother of two, said the free food was “alleviating a little stress” for families. She said that with the rising costs of goods, sometimes she doesn’t have enough money for groceries.
“We’re having to compromise on things that we do buy, especially with gas prices being the way that it is, just rent and everything else,” she said.
Ashley Douglas, senior director of Southern Dallas Thrives, said the coronavirus pandemic had already increased food insecurity, and now rising prices are creating a huge affordability barrier for people who are economically insecure.
“A $1.25 loaf of bread is a lot easier to purchase than a $3 loaf of bread,” she said. “As we’re coming off the heels of the pandemic, economic stability is a huge, huge issue that we’re seeing.”
Douglas said families have faced compounding challenges such as a lack of access to grocery stores in areas known as food deserts — which, in Dallas, are largely south of Interstate 30 — in addition to getting jobs with livable wages in a city where the cost of living has “skyrocketed consistently over the last five to 10 years.”
Nearly 40 volunteers signed up to help give out food Saturday, Douglas said. Registration was simple, she said: Families said where they lived and how many people were in their household.
Jan Cos, who recently moved to Dallas, said she appreciated the community outreach and not having to meet lots of requirements to receive the food.
“You never know the situation a person is in,” Cos said as she waited. “Even though you work, you don’t have resources, or things are tight. It’s just a higher cost of living.”
At the front of the line, volunteers packed a week’s worth of groceries into cars in less than 20 seconds, while asking whether families wanted whole milk or oat milk.
Recipients got produce, deli meat, chips, orange juice and other food in bags that were “recipe-focused,” Goodr project coordinator Myesha Thornton said.
“We want it to be a good experience,” she said. “We want it to be shame-free.”
An important part of the process, Thornton said, is “dignity of choice” — giving people options and foods they would pick up at the grocery store, not just nonperishables or odds and ends.
“If you’re on this Earth, you don’t ask to be here and the least we can do is give you food,” she said.
Thornton said that she had experienced food insecurity throughout her life and that she loves giving people free food now because it’s not an issue of scarcity, but of logistics.
Goodr focuses on finding excess food and getting it to people who will use it, instead of letting it go to landfills. Thornton said employees flew into Dallas and sourced everything at the event locally, with their trucks pulling up full of food.
This was the third pop-up grocery hosted by Goodr and Southern Dallas Thrives.
Douglas said that through its partnership with Goodr, the initiative is doing grocery deliveries and taking snacks to high school students on campus. She said that this year, she’s looking forward to bringing more food to the community.
“These things are not easy,” Douglas said. When families get up early to go get food for the week, she wants to remind them that the organization is there for them.
“We’re walking alongside them,” she said. “We recognize some of the struggles that they’re having and will figure out ways collectively on how we can provide a larger impact.”
