Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Aims to Collect More Than 70,000 Pounds of Food for Local Food Pantries

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage will once again host Healthy Food Week, a 10-day-long campaign to collect money and food to restock area food pantries in time for the summer months, when food pantries often experience the greatest need for their services.

Donations will be collected at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage offices in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. areas from April 28 to May 7. Items collected at each office will then be donated to the organizations chosen by branch managers and agents.

Members of the public are encouraged to participate by stopping in a Coldwell Banker office or select community site and making a donation. Items like bottled water and juice, as well as peanut butter and canned goods, are especially needed. Coldwell Banker encourages donations to be whole grain, high-fiber, low sodium, low/reduced fat and sugar-free, when possible.

This is the sixth year Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Mid-Atlantic has collected food for local food pantries. In 2016, the brokerage collected nearly 70,000 pounds of food.

“People don’t always realize it, but summer is especially hard on food pantries,” said Shawn Guzzo, Regional Vice President, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Greater Baltimore. “It’s when kids are home from school and there aren’t any big holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving that normally drive giving throughout the rest of the year. It’s a really great time for us to step in and contribute.”

“We love this event,” said Rick Hoffman, Regional Vice President of Washington DC Metropolitan Coldwell Banker Mid-Atlantic. “It’s wonderful to be able to put our resources and our energy into doing something that can help so many people in our community.”

“Our Healthy Food Drive is vitally important to the communities CB serves. Many food pantries’ shelves are depleted at this time of year and they are in great need of food donations,” said Rachel Carter, Branch Vice President at Coldwell Banker’s Alexandria Office, one of the brokerage’s top offices for collections in previous food drives. “In Alexandria, our food drive effort benefits local people in need - our neighbors. The Alexandria Office agents and our clients are phenomenally generous and we were very pleased last year to be able to donate the monetary equivalent of nearly 7,000 pounds of food. We hope to surpass that incredible achievement this year and will have donation booths set up at the Farmers Market on King Street in the upcoming weeks.”

Coldwell Banker’s Timonium office also contributed large donations during last year’s drive.

“In 2016, our Timonium office collected over 11,000 pounds of food,” said Patricia Kallmyer, Branch Vice President of the Timonium office. “Our goal was to collect healthy food for those who live in ‘food desert’ areas around the Baltimore-area where healthy, affordable food is difficult to buy. We believe access to healthy, nutritious food is a basic right for all members of our community, and that no one should go hungry.”

“The past couple of years, we have taken the well-known ‘food drive’ to a new level,” she said. “We've combined hunger relief efforts with healthy eating opportunities and nutrition information for our most vulnerable residents in our region. By providing a list of healthy food items to local shoppers, the contributions allow us to not only fill the pantry of the Hereford Food Bank but to do so with food that has a higher nutritional value – things like whole wheat pastas, cereal with reduced sugar, fruits packed in water and peanut butter.”

For those who cannot make an in-person food donation, monetary donations can be made online at ColdwellBankerHomes.com. For more information, go to https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/mid-atlantic/about/healthy-food-week/