Cambridge Chronicle: Daily Table announces new Local Lunchbox partnership

CAMBRIDGE — Cambridge Chronicle

Daily Table announced a new partnership to provide free breakfast and lunch seven days a week to anyone 18 and younger at their locations in Dorchester, Roxbury and Cambridge.  

Kids and teens can walk into any Daily Table location and ask for the “Local Lunchbox Special.” Parents and guardians can also pick up meals for their children. No ID is required. 

"We are thrilled to offer free meals for those under 18 through the Local Lunchbox, in partnership with the Shah Family Foundation and YMCA of Greater Boston. This program truly hits the core of our mission: providing healthy food for all,” said Doug Rauch, founder and president of Daily Table. “In addition to the Local Lunchbox, our three stores offer fresh produce, grocery staples and made-in-house prepared foods everyday prices significantly lower than other supermarkets. All food is SNAP eligible and, while all are welcome to come shop, SNAP customers save an additional 50% on fresh produce up to $10 per day through our Double Up Food Bucks program."

The Local Lunchbox program was founded in Chelsea last summer by the Shah Family Foundation and the YMCA of Greater Boston to help meet the overwhelming need for accessible, healthy and culturally-relevant meals. The program uses federal USDA funding to cover meals, distribution and a growing culinary workforce. In less than a year, the Chelsea program has served over one million meals, and it has since expanded to locations in Fall River, New Bedford, Wareham, Lowell, Lawrence, Brockton and Taunton.

Last month, the Shah Family Foundation and YMCA of Greater Boston created “Retail Local Lunchbox,” an offshoot of the original Local Lunchbox model that brings the free meals directly into local restaurants, with the food, supplies, staffing and other costs still funded entirely by the USDA. The first retail location was Spinelli’s in East Boston, which opened just a few weeks ago and is already serving nearly 100 students every day.

“The extreme circumstances of the COVID-19 crisis served for all of us as the mother of invention,” said Jill Shah, president of the Shah Family Foundation. “Through Local Lunchbox, we leveraged increases in federal funding to create a new food distribution model, one that puts the money back into the local economy by using locally-produced foods to cook culturally-relevant meals and create dozens of local jobs. We’re excited to expand this program to more retail locations in partnership with Daily Table as we continue working to make it easier than ever for Massachusetts students to access free, healthy food.” 

The launch of the new Daily Table partnership represents a quadrupling of the number of retail Local Lunchbox locations in Massachusetts, with even more coming on board over the coming weeks. These locations are at 450 Washington St. Dorchester; 2201 Washington St., Roxbury; and 684 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Local Lunchbox meals are available at all locations, every day of the week from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. 

More information about the Local Lunchbox program is available at locallunchbox.org.