“If you put resources in the hands of people in need, they will buy healthy food, cook that healthy food, and take care of their friends and family. And in the end we will all be healthier and not be food insecure.”
– Greg Silverman, CEO of West Side Campaign Against Hunger
On October 31, a day before November’s SNAP benefits were withheld due to the government shutdown, West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH) distributed food to 343 families from its 86th Street pantry. Just days later—on Nov. 3, after the millions of Americans who rely on monthly SNAP benefits did not receive their November allocations—WSCAH served nearly 700 families, a testament to the precarious nature of food security for so many and to how critical SNAP benefits are for these households in making ends meet.
Although this anecdote is highly localized and tied to a particular governance crisis, it tracks with national, regional, and New York City trends, all of which show that food insecurity is a deeply entrenched and growing crisis in the U.S. Feeding America’sdata shows a 31% increase in food insecurity in the United States since 2019. Data from Foodlink, a major food bank serving a 10-county region including Rochester NY, indicates a 65% increase in visits to frontline emergency food providers from 2021 to 2024. City Harvest has tracked an 85% increase in monthly visits to New York City food pantries and soup kitchens since 2019. The Roundtable—a coalition of nine frontline emergency food providers in NYC originally brought together by WSCAH’s Greg Silverman and supported by KK&P—has seen a collective 39% increase in total visits from 2022 to 2024.
The federal government shutdown is now over and NY state households have received their full SNAP allotments, but the near-term outlook for people with tenuous food security remains challenging. First, the federal government could well shut down again in February, with SNAP benefits once again used as a negotiating pawn. Second, federal regulatory changes from the July 1st HR1 Bill are in the process of kneecapping SNAP programs and recipients: benefits will be decoupled from inflation so over time their value diminishes, work requirements will be expanded significantly, and more costs will be transferred to states, increasing both administrative costs and future funding hurdles. The goal of the current administration is clearly to reduce the federal government’s obligation for funding hunger relief and, more so, make such relief ever more onerous to access.
Greg Silverman’s mission at WSCAH, of course, stands in sharp contrast to these efforts as he’s sought to make emergency feeding more accessible and empowering for customers, and to prioritize the quality and healthfulness of foods. When he joined in 2016, WSCAH was already known as the first food pantry in the United States to offer a choice model. Customers could choose the foods they wanted from the available offerings and this, along with a reputation for good product quality, made WSCAH a popular destination among people throughout NYC’s five boroughs. But it was still a limited selection and too much of it was ultra-processed foods that WSCAH received through donation. Soon after joining, Greg decided to send back an entire truckload of donated, ultra-processed items—“Rice-a-Roni, Hamburger Helper, and sugar-sweetened beverages”—a decision that became the basis for the organization’s current approach to emergency food distribution.
In 2017, only 15% of WSCAH’s offerings were fresh produce, whereas today, produce represents over 50% of what they give customers (as measured by weight). Similarly, 70% of the food distributed in 2017 was donated by food bank vendors, much of it of the low-grade, ultra-processed type described above. Today, 70% of what WSCAH offers is purchased from distributors, farmers, and other wholesale providers, which gives them far greater control over quality, selection, and cost and means that the organization is run with the intentionality of a grocery store rather than as a passive recipient of foods that no one else wants.
Purchasing a higher percentage of food, however, required more attention to wholesale pricing. In 2018, a working group of four emergency food organizations—New York Common Pantry, Project Hospitality, and St. John’s Bread & Life, and WSCAH—was convened to discuss and develop strategies for bulk purchasing among the members. Thus was born the first iteration of The Roundtable. What started as a proof-of-concept pilot is now a funded program with nine members and ongoing support from KK&P.
The Roundtable is fundamentally a community of practice with three focus areas: strategic purchasing, collective advocacy, and mutual support. As a result of its bulk purchasing efforts, for example, the members saved $465,000 in food expenses in 2024 alone. However, it’s perhaps the mutual support that is the most valuable aspect of The Roundtable for its members, especially through crises like the COVID pandemic and the recent SNAP funding delay. During those times, members rely on one another for best practices, funding updates, new service models, and moral support. As Greg puts it, “The only way we see change happening is by collaboration of like-minded, frontline thinkers who have their ear to the ground with their colleagues and community members.” In the face of persistent anti-SNAP messaging and policy from Washington DC, The Roundtable’s members remain deeply committed to their mission and to collaborating to make their work more effective.