Update About Coronavirus

To the Ballard Food Bank (BFB) community:

Keeping all our clients, volunteers, supporters, and staff healthy is our top priority.
As we continue to monitor reports and recommendations on COVID-19 from Seattle King County Public Health and the CDC, staff at Ballard Food Bank have been working on a plan to help prevent the spread of coronavirus to our more vulnerable populations. The Ballard Food Bank community has had no known cases of coronavirus.

In an abundance of caution, we are temporarily adjusting how we provide food and services.
While we normally have a grocery model, where customers choose items as in a grocery store, and put them in a cart, moving through a check-out line, we are now moving to handing out pre-packaged bags in the parking lot of the food bank. We are temporarily moving most of our operations outdoors. Our primary motivation for this is the small size of our waiting area and shopping area. Unlike your neighborhood grocery store, our space is quite small. Through this adjustment in services, we are providing options for folks to get food they need without having to be in close proximity to others. We are also asking clients who are feeling ill to ask a friend or family member to shop for them.

What else is changing?
This week we are also adjusting mail service so that the 500+ folks who get mail at the food bank ask for their mail at the front door rather than come inside. In our Community Resource Hub, we will have financial
assistance available for evictions and utility shut-offs on Monday and Tuesday of this week, with no community partners coming in this week. Our Home Delivery program, in which we deliver food to 100+ home bound clients, will operate as normal, as will our Weekend Food For Kids program, which operates withpartnership of 20 public schools, which remain open. We are exploring other avenues of food access for those families if public schools close.

Please follow us on social media and we will continue here as well as our website to update
if additional changes are made.

Volunteers, please continue to help as you feel able. Please stay home if you are ill.

Please take care of one another.

Thank you neighbors!
Jen

P.S. Many of you have been asking how you can help. As much of the food we offer at BFB comes from
food we recover at grocery stores, the fact that shelves are bare does affect us.Your donations always help, particularly in times like these as we may need to increase our own food purchasing. Thank you!