Meals on the Go

Mandy Cloninger, CFRE, serves as Chief Impact Officer for Feeding Tampa Bay. She is an accomplished fund raiser, nonprofit thought leader and accomplished speaker with almost 20 years of experience in community-based nonprofits, higher education and health care. She is passionate about social justice and mission work both internationally and at home.

Cloninger led Trinity Cafe, a charitable restaurant, to win the Bank of America Neighborhood Builders Award in 2015, fully funding the organization’s expansion to a second location and doubling the number of meals produced to help end hunger. She identified the opportunity for growth and expansion under a nationwide brand and led the organization to merge with Feeding Tampa Bay in 2019. This year the charitable restaurant is on track to open its third location, produce more than half a million meals in response to the COVID19 pandemic and launch its social enterprise, Meals on the Go.

Change lives, end hunger, transform a community and create sustainable change by purchasing nutritious, affordable, Meals On the Go. We provide a healthy, nutritious reheatable meal for families, children and seniors at a low cost, thereby improving the health and capability of those we serve. The meals are prepared by our FRESHForce workforce development team, as well as restaurant partners, who are able to employ furloughed workers. We are breaking down barriers by providing access. The production of these meals helps our community by training neighbors who have experienced barriers to employment to learn culinary arts skills, earn a certification and ultimately, gain an income through employment. Our customers save money in comparison to local fast food options, find dignity in paying for a healthy, nutritious meal, and improve the capability of our neighbors who are gaining an income and employment by preparing these meals as part of FRESHforce. 

We change lives one meal at a time by leading our community in the fight against hunger. Feeding Tampa Bay provides solutions around the table that include food for today, food for tomorrow and food for a lifetime. A member of the Feeding America network of food banks, Feeding Tampa Bay serves ten counties in west central Florida and is a leader in hunger relief. More than 650,000 people struggle with hunger in our area, and that number has more than doubled to 1.7 million amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We provided more than 60 million meals to end hunger last year and project serving more than 90 million meals this year.

To end hunger in our community, we are creating health and capability through access to food, programs and services. Healthy food is vital for children’s early development and ongoing learning in school. Adults need healthy food to avoid sick days that reduce their earning power and increase medical expenses. And seniors can live longer and more independently when maintaining a healthy diet. Our services help each of these populations. 

Change lives, end hunger, transform a community and create sustainable change by purchasing nutritious, affordable, Meals On the Go. Every meal provides a triple bottom line to help end hunger: meals, revenue and employment.

Meals on the Go improve the health and capability of the neighbors we serve by providing healthy, nutritious meals into the community to end hunger, generate unrestricted revenue, and provide training and employment to neighbors with barriers to employment. 

For every meal sold, $1 in profit is returned to our mission to end hunger. For every 1,000 meals we sell, we generate at least $1,000 in profit to support our charitable food and meal distribution. We can scale and multiply our project from 10 to 20,000 to 100,000 meals across our 10-county area. Every 100,000 meals we sell will generate $100,000 in profit to help us achieve our bold goal of a hunger-free Tampa Bay by 2025. As a member of the Feeding America network, our meals have the capability of being used as a best practice and model across the nation.

The people we serve identify as food insecure and include individuals of all ages and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Food insecurity refers to USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Food insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time and food insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs.

While many could be considered food insecure, many may not identify that way and could be categorized as ALICE households (Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed), United Way’s representation of households living paycheck to paycheck. In Hillsborough County, for example, 27% of food insecure people are above the income threshold to receive SNAP or other benefits, meaning any food relief must come from charity. For these neighbors, low cost healthy foods are vital.

FTB regular engages clients in feedback surveys to learn about their life circumstances and about the quality of our services. We also sit on several community advisory groups where issues are discussed with community members and services providers. 

Our Meals on the Go combat the stigma and shame of traditional food relief by offering our customers the dignity of choice to purchase a low cost, healthy meal. In addition, every meal is prepared by an individual who has gained an income through training or employment and has experienced barriers to employment like poverty, homelessness, incarceration or aging out of the foster care system.

In 2018, we piloted a project in a mixed-income area asking people to text for a free meal. This experiment showed us that people are open to modern methods of connecting to food relief. Guests shared positive comments about the quality and appearance of the meal but wanted the dignity of paying and selecting the meal. In 2019, during our government shutdown response, we consistently produced 300 meals daily and distributed these meals charitably through our airport pantry, community market and agency partners. During our COVID-19 response, we've been able to scale these reheatable meals from 5,000 weekly to a height of 40,000 weekly. To-date we’ve distributed nearly 400,000 meals on the go. We've maximized production by leveraging our commercial kitchen, workforce development team, and restaurant partners to employ furloughed workers while maintaining costs. Meals have been delivered directly to seniors, homebound individuals and low-income communities. While this effort has been charitable, we have the opportunity to utilize the framework of potential customers that have been developed including local government, healthcare and housing partners, seniors, low-income housing residents and our supporters to launch this as a sustainable social enterprise.

My daughter Alyssa grew up in the foster system and has personally experienced hunger. In her first few weeks living in our home, she always asked for permission to eat. Can I use the milk? Is it ok to eat the Cheerios? Can I have a cheese stick? What’s for dinner?

Growing up in homes where there was not enough money or food, our Meals on the Go would have benefited Alyssa personally as a child experiencing hunger. She could have enjoyed a healthy, low-cost meal instead of a local fast food restaurant. The meals would have benefited her family when they lived in food desert areas and spent more than $3 on every meal they accessed due to a lack of grocery stores.  Our Meals on the Go could have trained or employed her mom, who has had challenges gaining employment due to her criminal history. 

No child, woman or man should go hungry in our community. Every Meal on the Go has the potential to change a life and end hunger.

The Feeding Tampa Bay Senior Management team has great depth and experience across many disciplines including business management, program and community development and marketing. We are committed to ending hunger in Tampa Bay by 2025. Our Trinity Café team overseen by Executive Chef Daniel Graves has vast experience in meal production.  We have a core group of volunteers from the community who want to leverage their expertise in business, restaurant, marketing and social enterprise development. Feeding Tampa Bay has the production facilities, restaurant partners, distribution network, vendors, press, business, and community connections to launch a successful social enterprise from day one. 

Most recently, as were planning our social enterprise launch, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With our Trinity Café charitable restaurants restricted to serve only grab and go meals, and the dining room closed, we turned the facility into full-scale meal production. Requests began to flood in from medically vulnerable individuals, seniors, low-income and senior housing facilities for prepared meals. We pivoted from preparing 500 hot meals daily to scale these reheatable meals on the go to 5,000 weekly to 20,000 to a peak of 40,000. We shared and replicated our existing model of production, mobilized our FRESHForce team at the Italian Club and partnered with Amalie Arena, the Karol Hotel, Culinary Specialties, and the Hangar during this crisis to help employ furloughed restaurant workers and maintain costs.

We built a distribution model from scratch to meet the need. Meals have been delivered directly to seniors, homebound individuals and low-income communities leveraging our fleet, food trucks, Amazon, UberEats and donated delivery vans from local restaurants. To-date, we have provided nearly 400,000 meals to the community charitably and are on track to continue 15,000 meals weekly through 2020.

I fell in love with two little girls named Christy and Lisa in Guatemala during a mission trip in 2009. I learned they loved to read, like me. When I met their mom, she was washing their clothes in a dirty, trash-strewn, polluted river, the only source of drinking water in the community. It broke my heart to achieve justice for basic needs like water, food, health and education. I came home different and started volunteering. The first time I served a local neighbor a meal, I could barely smile. It broke my heart.

I have dedicated my personal and professional service to help achieve justice for basic needs and to mentor, coach and lead by lifting others to help transform my community. I have utilized my leadership: mentoring, speaking, as a BIG sister, and as a foster parent. I have built relationships with guests of our restaurant to envision pathways to employment and serve more meals into the community. With my leadership, we have expanded Trinity Cafe to three locations serving almost 2 million meals, merged with a national brand and are poised to launch our social enterprise, Meals on the Go.

Our innovations in serving those in need are both client-focused on dignity and improving health. For the food bank, this program is innovative as a social enterprise and a sustainable funding source. In order to remove stigma and personal experience barriers, our Meals on the Go will replicate the ordering experience of app-based food delivery systems (DoorDash, for example); meal options, pick up times and other ordering features will be similar. For those already accessing traditional food relief, the program will remove an individual experience barrier, moving away from the experience of standing in line for a meal towards that of the conventional food service. The experience helps to retain the dignity many feel by paying for food, yet reward those who like to look for good deals- and a large, healthy, tasty meal for $3 is a great deal. In this way, we will be competing with unhealthy fast food present in the food swamps that exist in many low-income areas. Our meals will be competitively priced and follow MyPlate guidelines, making them much healthier. A family of four can have a meal for $12 rather than $20+ from a fast food restaurant, and they can get it while also picking up healthy groceries for future meals. 

Feeding Tampa Bay has a bold goal – a hunger free Tampa Bay by 2025. Our outcomes include improving the health and the capability of the guests we serve, and we have 4 very simple strategies to get there: evolve, energize, engage and empower. To do this we need to fundamentally shift how we energize and improve the health of the guests we serve and how we engage our local community. We need to both feed the line and shorten the line.

Our Meals on the Go helps achieve two of our strategies: evolve how we deliver food and empower our neighbors through income and employment.

Evolve: Imagine people have food. Our goal is to provide 120 million meals by 2025 to close the hunger gap in our community. Meals on the Go will provide at least half a million meals by 2025 to improve health and help close the hunger gap.

Empower: Imagine people have a better future. Our goal is to invest in individual capability and expand opportunities and future prosperity for those we serve. Through job skills and employment connections, we will ultimately change lives, and transform our community, creating a stronger Tampa Bay and beyond. Our FRESHForce workforce development program will train and employ more than 100 neighbors, who ultimately will no longer need to rely on our food bank, and thereby, will be empowered with an income through employment to achieve their full potential.

Current 2020: Meals on the Go will serve half a million meals charitably to more than 100,000 neighbors. Our FRESHForce workforce development program will train and employ more than 30 individuals who have barriers to employment, while our furlough worker program will employ 50 neighbors. Feeding Tampa Bay will serve 90 million meals to our community to help end hunger.

In our first year of sales, we will prepare and sell 100,000 meals. Our FRESHForce workforce development program will train and employ more than 50 individuals who have barriers to employment. Feeding Tampa Bay will serve 90 million meals to our community to help end hunger.

By 2025, we will prepare and sell 500,000 meals in at least 5 of our 10 counties. Feeding Tampa Bay will end hunger by providing more than 120 million meals to our community.

Our year one goal is to reach 1,000 funded meals daily, sell 250,000 meals via contracts and direct consumer business and profit $250,000 to reinvest in our social enterprise and charitable meal production. Contracts will be secured to expand across our 10-county area through local government, healthcare facilities and direct to consumer business via agency and/or restaurant partner relationships.

We will pilot our sales including targeted price point, online ordering, pickup, home delivery and vending-machine-based sales in strategic locations like low-income housing and senior communities. Once our market research reveals the best distribution and price point, we can easily scale and multiply our project across our 10-county area

Every 100,000 meals we sell will generate $100,000 in profit to help us support and achieve our bold goal of a hunger-free Tampa Bay by 2025.

Within the next five years, our meal production and sales will continue to scale across our 10-county area until we serve 1 Million meals annually into our community. We will sell 1,000 funded meals daily in every county. A major retail grocery partner will carry our product line in stores. Sales from our online store will be fulfilled in our restaurants, warehouse and groceries on-the-go truck on a daily basis. 

COVID-19: The COVID-19 pandemic is a significant barrier and opportunity for Meals on the Go. Much of the program has been designed charitably for crisis response and in order to transition to a social enterprise, we need to avoid blowback and negative feedback when our 6-week charitable intervention ends, transition neighbors to SNAP benefits, ongoing food relief, wraparound services, and provide the dignity of choice in continuing to purchase Meals on the Go.

Market: The market for restaurants and food is pivoting largely to to-go and meal delivery in the pandemic response. Market conditions and barriers are changing almost daily. We need to stand out in a competitive market as a healthy, affordable solution for government, nonprofit partners, senior and housing facilities, as well as our neighbors. 

SNAP benefits: The use of SNAP benefits to purchase both hot and cold food provides dignity and choice. In Florida, only a percentage of SNAP benefits can be utilized for prepared food purchases.

Technology: Technology is a significant barrier and opportunity to identify the best platform to manage the customer service experience, payment including SNAP benefits, inventory management as well as delivery capability. 

Distribution:  We currently utilize a hybrid delivery model, where we leverage our fleet to deliver meals as well as partners including Amazon, UberEats and some food trucks and restaurants deliver as well.

COVID-19: We need to manage public perception around COVID19 and our crisis response as well as build out our guest and client customer service experience and communication plan. Our marketing team and agency will build out a marketing launch plan, seek feedback from key stakeholders and oversee the launch of media, internal and external communications.

Market: We will need to conduct timely and ongoing market research to pivot and quickly adapt to optimize our product selection and price point.

SNAP benefits: We need to monitor changing regulations and implementation of SNAP benefits. We need to consider advocacy and positioning to change SNAP rules where appropriate and beneficial to the neighbors we serve.

Technology: Our team is currently researching and investigating technology tools provided by Big Commerce, Feeding America (OrderAhead) and JPMorgan Chase (custom).

Distribution:  We need to monitor expenses and partner opportunities to minimize our costs, maintain efficiencies of scale and maximize profit on distribution. We are researching and investigating vending machines as a solution as well at key locations. 

With nearly 600 agency partners who receive food from Feeding Tampa Bay and in turn distribute food to low income clients, we are the leader and driving force behind food relief in the region. We engage more than 50,000 volunteers and more than 10,000 individual and major donors including corporations and foundations. Charitable meal distribution is supported by Florida Blue, Humana, BayCare and Senior Citizen Services of Pinellas County and individual contributions.

Meals on the Go change lives and end hunger. It is a social enterprise business with a service subsidization model. Every meal has a triple bottom line: healthy, nutritious meals into the community to end hunger, generate unrestricted revenue, and provide training and employment to neighbors with barriers to employment. 

We provide a healthy, nutritious reheatable meal for families, children and seniors at a low cost, thereby improving the health and capability of those we serve. The meals are prepared by our FRESHForce workforce development team, as well as restaurant partners, who are able to employ furloughed workers. We are breaking down barriers by providing access. The production of these meals helps our community by training neighbors who have experienced barriers to employment to learn culinary arts skills, earn a certification and ultimately, gain an income through employment. Our customers save money in comparison to local fast food options, find dignity in paying for a healthy, nutritious meal, and improve the capability of our neighbors who are gaining an income and employment by preparing these meals as part of FRESHforce. 

For every meal sold, $1 in profit is returned to our mission to end hunger. Every 100,000 meals we sell will generate $100,000 in profit to help us achieve our bold goal of a hunger-free Tampa Bay by 2025. 

We seek philanthropic and start-up funding from potential donors including individuals, corporations and foundations in order to balance our risk and our overall investment. Specifically for our Meals on the Go social enterprise, we have secured two philanthropic grants totaling $20,000: $10,000 from Social Venture Partners, Tampa Bay, from FastPitch in February 2020, and Senior Citizen Services of Pinellas County in May 2020.

We have more than $150,000 in pending grants for year one and startup funding with the Wawa Foundation, BJ’s, and Order Ahead. As every meal sold generates $1 in profit, it is a self-funding model. 

We estimate breaking even on year one expenses and self-funding if we are able to achieve 750 meals sold daily by the 6-month mark.

Specifically for our Meals on the Go social enterprise, we have secured two philanthropic grants totaling $20,000: $10,000 each from Fast Pitch, Social Venture Partners, Tampa Bay, in February 2020, and Senior Citizen Services of Pinellas County in May 2020.

We have charitably funded our meal distribution for the COVID-19 response from current philanthropy. 

We have funded pilot meal delivery in several grants to provide Meals on the Go support with medically-tailored meals as a health solution with Florida Blue, Humana and Baycare.

We have more than $150,000 in pending grants for year one and startup funding with the Wawa Foundation, BJ’s, and Order Ahead.

We are seeking reimbursement for COVID19 meal delivery from Hillsborough County CARES funding for approximately 200,000 meals distributed from July - September 2020. 

Food/Labor for 250,000 meals: $500,000 (detail/cost per 1,000 below)

Startup costs: $95,000 (detail below)

Total: $595,000

The opportunity to utilize an incredible network of Elevate heroes and partners can improve our business plan and model. A tailored media and marketing campaign will help magnify our work and inspire others to want to engage in our mission to end hunger, and it will have a snowball effect on our work helping recruit new customers, donors and supporters. Lastly the learning opportunity to work with MIT and its team would be a professional and personal development opportunity that can help me learn and grow to become a better leader. 

Opportunities to seek new revenue and funding sources.

Mentorship and coaching among the incredible MIT and Elevate Heroes network.

Assistance with legal setup, SNAP regulations and considerations.

Marketing, media and exposure to build our brand and launch a successful social enterprise.

Technology solutions to help integrate a seamless customer, inventory and delivery/distribution experience.