The True Cost of Food Insecurity
During Mother Road Market’s two and a half years of operation we have experienced a variety of staff challenges, from dealing with personal struggles like permanent housing, to receiving access to services, and even food insecurity. Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation has made addressing the whole person through equitable employment a priority. In February 2021, LTFF instituted a livable wage for all hourly employees as a first step.
As crucial as that was, another basic need was evident, this time in our Tulsa community as a whole: hunger. As an organization focused on eating well and doing good, we knew action was needed to keep our own staff and community thriving. Thanks to the creative problem solving of our team and the support of the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation board, Mother Road Market offered a 12-week food subsidy program during the pandemic to address food insecurity and bolster revenue to merchants. By working with local partners Food on the Move and Growing Together, Mother Road Market was able to donate 24,165 locally-made meals to feed our community and generate more than $128,000 in revenue for our merchants.
Even through the turmoil and setbacks of 2020, we came out on the other side this spring with some first steps to learning about solutions for food insecurity that feed those who need it most, while helping our merchants and staff in the process. It’s truly a win/win for us.
Food insecurity is defined as the lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active and healthy life. Food insecurity data also measures how many people cannot afford food. [1] Oklahoma is one of thirteen states in the US where food insecurity is higher than the national average. [2] In Oklahoma, one in three children go to bed hungry, and one in six is food insecure. In fact, a staggering 20% of Tulsa’s children are food insecure. Many of Tulsa’s citizens do not have room in their budget for food, because they do not make enough money to afford the basic costs of living. [3]
The health impacts associated with poor diet quality are significant, ranging from stunted growth and obesity, to micronutrient deficiencies and diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, cancers, etc. Unhealthy diets are increasing healthcare costs globally [4] -- health costs are projected to reach an average of $1.3 Trillion in 2030. More than half of these are direct healthcare costs related to treating different diet-related diseases.
The evidence is overwhelming: food insecurity does not impact all people equally. Food insecurity is particularly damaging for kids – proper nutrition is crucial for a child’s mental, emotional and physical development. Poor nutrition drains children of their energy and vitality, which makes it difficult for them to thrive in school and in life. Eating nutritious food gives children the leg up they need to get through daily learning in the classroom and honing their social skills as they interact with one another.
Children who are food insecure are more likely to be in poor health and struggle in school. For some, there could be lifelong implications where a child may never reach their full potential as a result of poor nutrition during their formative years. [5] Food insecurity is also experienced in greater proportion by some racial and ethnic groups, due largely to structural racism and discrimination.
The disparities are also evident in the underlying factors that contribute to food insecurity, namely unemployment and poverty.[6] In 2020, Black individuals likely experienced food insecurity at nearly twice the rate of white individuals. While experts anticipate the food insecurity rate will improve among white individuals in 2021, the food insecurity rate for black individuals is expected to remain unchanged. [7]
Economic health and food insecurity rates are closely related. During the Great Recession, food insecurity increased drastically in the United States. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic had an outsized impact on low wage workers who face the highest risk of food insecurity.
In Oklahoma, the food insecurity rate among adults climbed from 15.1% to 18.6 percent. One in three Oklahoma children faces food insecurity in the post COVID-19 world. [8] Disruptions in food supply and lack of income due to the loss of livelihoods caused by COVID-19 means that households across the globe are facing increased difficulties in accessing nutritious food, making it even harder for the poorer populations to obtain healthful foods.
Part of what makes food insecurity difficult to solve is that the underlying causes: poverty, underemployment and inconsistent access to enough healthy food are often deeply interconnected.[9] The primary reason millions of people around the world suffer from hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition is because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. [10] Even in America, the world’s greatest food producing nation, children and adults face hunger and poverty.
In 2019, 34 million people lived in poverty in America. For a family of four, that means earning just $25,000 per year. [11] As I outlined in further detail in the article on the importance of paying Livable Wage, handling emergency expenses is hardest for lower income households. Many Americans haven’t managed to stash away rainy-day savings, and therefore must rely on credit cards or borrowing from friends and family for an unexpected expense. [12] A broken food system also contributes to the high food insecurity rate locally and globally. The “food system” includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution and disposal of food and food-related items. Low wages, food supply shortages and waste need to be addressed within the food system to solve food insecurity and like everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption in domestic food supply chains impacted demand which in turn increased global food prices. [13] December 2020 saw the highest global food prices for any month in the last six years, according to the FAO food price index. When wages do not match increased costs, food insecurity occurs.
Despite increasing rates of global hunger and food insecurity, one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted. [14]. Forty percent of food waste occurs at the retail or customer level in industrialized countries. [15] Cutting wastages by just ¼ could feed 870 million hungry people and prevent ongoing damage to the climate. [16]
But, most of the traditional research into food waste looks only at what goes uneaten at the distribution, retail, and consumer levels. When a team of researchers at the University of Santa Clara set out to figure out how much produce is wasted before it even leaves the fields, they found a much more dire picture. According to the research team, about 1/3 of food that’s grown is either unharvested or left behind in the fields because the growers suspect it might not meet the specifications of their buyers. [17] That means almost 75% of the United States food supply is wasted annually.
Restaurants are one of the nation’s largest sectors of employment and the sector of the food chain that employs the most workers, with 10 million employees. [18] The restaurant industry also includes 7 of the 10 lowest paying jobs in the country. [19] “Wage and tip theft, unpaid overtime, lack of paid sick time and lack of employer sponsored health insurance are associated with an increased risk of food insecurity among restaurant workers. The sad irony is that many restaurant workers, despite making our food system work, cannot afford to feed themselves or their families”. [20]
“During two enormous crises — a public health emergency and an economic crash — restaurant service workers have found themselves double-exposed. Those who have been able to keep their jobs have felt compelled to keep working, though they know the risks of long hours surrounded by maskless customers.” [21] Many say their average tips have declined, while they’ve been saddled with the added work of policing patrons who aren’t social distancing, or as one service worker put it, “babysitting for the greater good.” On top of this, women, who make up more than 2/3 of servers, say they are facing “maskual harassment” — a term coined by the nonprofit organization One Fair Wage to describe demands that servers remove their masks in order to get tipped. [22]
In response to the impact COVID-19 had on low wage workers facing food insecurity, and in light of the racial reckoning in the United States and updated data highlighting the demographic disparities even within subminimum wage jobs in the service industry, Mother Road Market announced a new policy to pay all employees a livable wage in February of this year.
Even with a livable wage, recovering from the disruption in income due to the COVID-19 pandemic has left many restaurant workers in impossible financial situations. Savings, if they existed, were depleted, and access to government assistance was inconsistent and complicated. When Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation learned Mother Road Market team members were falling through the social safety net, we sprang into action. An emergency fund was established to offer any employee access to a grant of up to $1000 to address an emergency situation.
Mother Road Market is able to offer one standard restaurant-worker benefit in a new way: the free shift meal. As a nonprofit food hall, we provide space, programming and customer service to decrease barriers for food entrepreneurs. As such, we are a food industry business that does not actually make food. We found a mutually beneficial solution to accommodate this industry benefit -- we’re providing our team members with a monthly meal subsidy in the form of a Mother Road Market gift card. This not only feeds our team, it supports our merchants’ sales goals! Plus, it has the additional benefit of allowing our team to taste food at the Market so they can make honest recommendations to hungry guests. On top of the monthly meal card, we keep a staff fridge stocked with healthy snacks for our team members to eat on the go or take home to their families.
This year, the LTFF board gave us the opportunity to scale our meal subsidy program by pilot testing meal subsidies for nonprofit partner organizations. Like the MRM staff meal subsidy program, the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation team was charged with developing a pilot test for a program that would both support food insecurity and provide stable ramp up revenue to merchants who opted into the program. The result, largely researched and implemented by Director of Food and Retail Strategy, Jeff Thompson, was a beautiful symbiosis between providing stable revenue to businesses in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing food insecurity with locally-made specialty food.
“The COVID pandemic consistently challenged our team to think outside the box, and this project was a rare moment where we could arrive at a win/win scenario that benefited our merchants and our community,” said Thompson. “Additionally, we were able to provide meals while being intentionally mindful of preserving the dignity of the people receiving them."
Since March 2020, restaurant owners have had to endure what many say was already a broken business model -- inconsistent income and slim margins that typically translate into low wages and no benefits for workers. Some restaurants have responded with programs similar to Mother Road Market’s food subsidy, betting that feeding the food insecure is a viable way to offset the high fixed costs of a restaurant. Nonprofit Rethink Food invested $10 million in a program to pay 40 restaurants to feed underserved communities.
Through their Certified program, independent restaurants sign long term contracts to feed the hungry. Jose’ Andres’ nonprofit food relief organization World Central Kitchen has partnered with restaurants and catering companies to do the same. Where government reimbursement rates for charitable meals tend to hover around $3 per meal, World Central Kitchen pays $10 and Rethink Food pays $5 and offers food donations. This allows the restaurant to pay their employees, and the food is a sharp upgrade from typical fare at community centers.
Mother Road Market’s pilot test proved this could be a viable model that would support the community while also developing startup food entrepreneurs. A partnership between a restaurant startup and a nonprofit addressing food insecurity, subsidized by a nonprofit committed to supporting local business and addressing hunger, could provide valuable services on both ends of the program.
Kaitlin Garrett, Director of Operations for Growing Together, said of the collaboration, “We are truly grateful for the incredible partnership with the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation and the partners that we worked closely with at Mother Road Market to get over 7,300 healthy meals out into our community to families in our neighborhood or our community schools.”
Garrett continued, “During this overwhelming time for most, we have seen how easily the basic needs of a family turn into very complex issues. Food should never become a privilege. Our Community Mobilization and CIS team have been hard at work to not just meet the pressing needs of our families, but also to bring hope and warmth into our community; to be a community. By offering these meals, this project has lifted a little weight off the shoulders of more than 940 families and has allowed us to get back to the heart of being a good neighbor..."
At the pilot’s conclusion on April 27th, merchant revenue at Mother Road Market was beginning to stabilize. The subsidy assisted our merchants by providing stable revenue to prepare them to ramp up their sales as the city’s restaurant industry slowly recovered from COVID-19. An additional donation from Life Church enabled 794 more meals to be delivered to local hotels housing unhomed Tulsans during Tulsa’s historic freeze in February, 2021. “It has been incredible serving over 1000’s of individuals weekly with meals from the restaurants at the Mother Road Market,” said Kevin Harper, Executive Director of Food on the Move. “We are thankful for the tremendous impact we have made in our community through our partnership with Mother Road Market and the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation.”
Food insecurity is absolutely solvable in our lifetime, and it starts with increasing wages and increasing the capacity of the social safety net so that all citizens have the opportunity to afford the basic necessities of life. Long term, it ends with rebuilding the food system to prioritize equitable food security and developing efficient foodstreams that decrease waste so more people have access to healthy, unprocessed food. There’s more to this story, and we hope to use what we’ve learned to continue helping our Tulsa community, and beyond, through food-based programs and partnerships.
FINAL STATS:
Total Meals Donated: 24,165 (16,343 Food on the Move / 7,372 Growing Together)
$128,540.50 revenue generated for merchants.
Life Church purchased an additional 794 meals during the freeze for homeless who were being housed in local hotels.