Stop & Shop School Food Pantry Program Celebrates Support of 100th New York School

Stop & Shop is proud to announce a major milestone in its fight against food insecurity with the opening and support of its 100th school in New York through the Stop & Shop School Food Pantry Program.

The milestone celebration took place at William Rall Elementary School, located at 761 Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst, where Stop & Shop presented a commercial refrigerator and a $10,000 donation and joined school leaders in cutting the ribbon for the school’s new food pantry. The pantry will serve all 518 enrolled students, ages 5 to 11.

The event featured appearances by New York Mets alumni, four-time MLB All Star infielder José Reyes, along with team mascots Mr. and Mrs. Met, who helped engage students in a celebration that brought together baseball, community, and nutrition. The Mets Citi Field Food Truck provided fresh produce for 100 local families, reinforcing a shared commitment to fighting food insecurity and expanding access to healthy food.

Stop & Shop launched the Stop & Shop School Food Pantry Program in 2019 to help remove barriers that can impact student success by ensuring consistent access to nutritious food. The program supports schools by providing gift cards and cash donations to help stock existing pantries or establish new ones.

Since opening its first school food pantry in New York in 2019, Stop & Shop has grown the program to support 100 schools statewide in just seven years. Today, the company supports 52 schools in New York City, 30 on Long Island, 11 in Westchester, and 7 in the Hudson Valley, providing access to food for more than 200,000 students and families.

To date, Stop & Shop has donated more than $3.75 million to schools across New York. In the 2025–26 school year alone, the company will donate just under $1 million to school food pantries supporting 100 New York schools, serving an average of 16,626 children and families each month.

Food insecurity continues to impact communities across New York State, including New York City, Long Island, Westchester County, and the Hudson Valley:

• Hunger is at the highest level in 5 years. The food insufficiency rate in New York State is 10.4%, higher than during the early days of the pandemic in 2020 at 10.2%.
• Households with children are experiencing food insufficiency at about 1.5 times the rate of households without children.
• More than 1.4 million New York City residents are food insecure.
• Nearly 1 in 4 (24.2%) of children under 18 in New York City live in households that are food insecure
• Approximately 313,880 people on Long Island struggle with food insecurity, including nearly 71,500 children.
• Approximately 40% of food-insecure Long Island households are above the poverty level but don’t make enough to keep up with the high cost of living in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, making them ineligible for nutrition assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• 38% of households, over 1 in 3, are at risk of hunger in Westchester County
• 1 in 9 adults and 1 in 7 children in the Hudson Valley are food insecure.

“We are proud to mark this important milestone with the opening and support of the 100th New York school through our Stop & Shop School Food Pantry Program,” said Jim McGinn, Regional Vice President of Operations at Stop & Shop. "Hunger remains a growing challenge across the state, and as a grocery retailer with deep roots in New York, we feel a strong responsibility to help ensure students and their families have reliable access to the nutrition they need to succeed. We are especially grateful to the New York Mets for joining us in this mission of ‘Feeding It Forward’ and for helping make a meaningful difference in the communities we serve.”

“The establishment of this food pantry marks a significant milestone in our commitment to student well-being,” said Farrah McKenna, Principal of William Rall Elementary School. “We are deeply thankful to Stop & Shop for their partnership. This resource is more than just a pantry; it is a testament to our collective investment in the long-term health and academic potential of our students.”

The Stop & Shop School Food Pantry Program now supports more than 280 schools across its five-state footprint, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, serving over 43,000 families each month. Stop & Shop plans to continue expanding and supporting school food pantries across New York in 2026 and beyond.

For more information about Stop & Shop’s School Food Pantry program, visit https://stopandshop.com/pages/school-food-pantry-program.