Daily Bread Food Pantry In Danbury Sets 1-Day Distribution Record

DANBURY, CT — Thanksgiving week is famous for being a busy time for airlines. Less famously but more significantly, it's also crunch time for food pantries.

Daily Bread Food Pantry in Danbury, which already serves two thousand hungry people each week, had its biggest one-day distribution ever on Tuesday. Several dozen volunteers staffed the farmer’s market style outdoor event and welcomed 535 families in need, a record for the forty-year-old agency, according to past president Debbie Landzberg.

"Each family received about 50 pounds of food including fresh apples, sweet potatoes, apples and onions, along with cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing mix, pies and other baked items and, of course, frozen turkeys," Landzberg told Patch in an email.

According to the USDA, more than 34 million people, including 9 million children, in the United States are food insecure, and skyrocketing inflation is making matters worse. Even the turkeys are smaller and more expensive this year.

Other sectors of the economy may be recovering after getting hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still is not translating into the kitchen. Daily Bread, which is wholly dependent upon the community to sustain its operations, is serving five times more than pre-COVID figures, Landzberg said.

Nationwide, donations to food assistance programs are down, according to Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief organization. But that doesn't have to be the case in Danbury. Learn what Daily Bread needs, and how you can make a donation, on the organization's website.