A Community Open House was held on Wednesday, October 21st to celebrate our new location. In 2010 Foodlink will move to our new facility located just north of downtown Rochester at the former Pepsi bottling plant at 425 Ormond Street. The new building gives us an opportunity to accomplish several of our goals by bringing together our family of programs and making our operations more efficient and effective.
The new building will house the warehouse operations for the food bank as it grows to meet the needs of our community. Our current warehouse has four floors, which presents challenges to inventory management and flow. The new warehouse is all on one floor, and the space is configured to allow for efficient storage and operations. The facility is also much newer, which will reduce maintenance needs and ensure optimal stewardship of the resources we are given.
The new site also allows us to bring all of our entities together at one location. Freshwise Catering is currently located on Ling Road in Greece where we prepare nearly 2,000 hot, nutritious meals each day for at-risk children.
The Open House was held from 4:00-6:30 PM in the warehouse at 425 Ormond Street. It gave the community a chance to meet with Foodlink staff and get a better understanding of the many programs Foodlink is involved in. There were information tables highlighting our history, food drives, volunteer opportunities, special events and fundraising, green initiatives as well as both of our Social Enterprises; Freshwise Farms and Freshwise Kitchen.
The event was catered by Freshwise Kitchen which did a phenomenal job preparing an autumn menu to correspond with the harvest theme of the evening. Wine and beer were donated by Marketview Liquor and Rohrbach Brewing Company respectively. The ambiance was set by The Ryan Barclay Trio, a local jazz band.
We look forward to working with our community of partners and supporters to implement our programs and other improvements in our ongoing effort to meet the needs of our community.
Terra Keller
Community Relations Coordinator