The first thing you see when you walk into the back parking lot of the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in Fenway are 100 plastic bags overflowing with fresh carrots, string beans, arugula and potatoes, accompanied by small slips of paper with recipe suggestions and dates for future events.
It seems like it would be a farmers market, except for one huge difference: instead of each bundle of carrots costing $5, customers could purchase entire packages of fresh produce for only $2 a bag.
Fair Foods, a Dorchester-based food rescue organization, has “provided healthy produce to low income families in the Boston Area” since 1988, according to their website. They source surplus food from supermarkets and food vendors across the city, partnering with hundreds of volunteers and various community organizations to redistribute the food at more than 40 sites across the city.
Over the last couple months, Fair Foods has added even more more sites for residents to pick up $2, 12-pound bags of assorted fresh produce in an effort to offset rising food prices and sustainability concerns.
Increasing their reach to more than 40 different sites around Boston has allowed significantly more residents to benefit from the unique program, covering a wide range of communities in the greater Boston area, according to Fair Foods’ website.
Ardis Vaughan, board chair at the First Parish Church Dorchester — which has partnered with Fair Foods for the last four years to host a distribution center every week — said unlike other nutrition assistance programs, Fair Foods does not restrict its services to residents in a lower income bracket.
“You can get fresh wholesome fruits and vegetables and it doesn’t matter who you are,” Vaughan said. “There is no stigma or shame, anyone can show up and get a bag of food.”
In a single day, Fair Foods receives over 10,000 pounds of fresh food that were not sold due to overstock or imperfections, which they separate into 12-pound bags and sell across the Greater Boston area, according to the Fair Foods website.
By expanding their $2-a-bag sites farther across the Greater Boston Area, the reach of the program has widened significantly. Vaughan said the First Parish Church was one of Boston’s largest distribution sites, selling 300 to 400 bags of food every week and a total of 88 tons of fresh food throughout the past four years.
“Food uses all this water and energy to grow and harvest and transport,” Vaughan said. “If it wasn’t going to Fair Foods, it would go into the dumps or the compost.”
Vaughan said many of the First Parish Church volunteers help with translations, as they interact with a broad reach of communities, including Haitian, Creole, Spanish and Vietnamese people.
“We see a broad reach of people,” Vaughan said, “people who look like they need to buy 10-pound bags of food and people who look like they shop at Stop n’ Shop but want to shop sustainably.”
Vaughan said First Parish has seen declining numbers of volunteers in recent months and that she hopes that students returning to school may help bolster their efforts.
Helen Murphy, who works at the Fenway Community Development Corporation but volunteers at the Fair Foods distribution site hosted by Holy Trinity, said she particularly liked that fair foods did not place restrictions on who could buy their food.
“It’s a nice program because we don’t have any income or residency verification, we’re not asking anything from anyone,” Murphy said. “If they want a bag, they can come get one.”
Murphy, who said she helps to coordinate the volunteers at the Holy Trinity site, said the church hosts a Fair Foods distribution site every other Wednesday.
“We throw a recipe in the bag to encourage people to use everything that is in here,” Murphy said. “We get a pretty diverse variety of vegetables and fruits, stuff that I haven’t seen before, stuff that some folks might not know how to cook … just to make it as accessible and culturally sensitive as possible.”
Fenway residents Rachel Huot and Ruth Khowais said they had been volunteers at the Holy Trinity site “since the beginning,” and said they hoped there would be a new surge of volunteers to offset the declining numbers they have seen in recent months.
“Some people don’t come every week like they used to,” Huot said. “And everybody’s got something to do. And this group might have been twice as many people when we started.”
Khowais said Wednesday’s products were especially attractive, as carrots were one of Fair Foods more popular products.
“We never know what we’re gonna get,” Khowais said. “Today’s pretty good because everybody loves the carrots. It’s two dollars a bag, sometimes we have bread. This is all food that would have been thrown out.”
Robert Arida, who serves as one of the clergy at Holy Trinity and was volunteering Wednesday, said that resident involvement was especially important, as the entire event depends on the efforts of volunteers.
Murphy said the site has recently seen an influx of students coming to purchase produce, particularly from Northeastern University, which is a 10-minute walk away.
“I think in a growing way we have seen more and more students coming through,” Murphy said. “We are not thrilled there’s a lot of food insecurity, but we’re glad that it’s reaching the food insecure population.”
Arida said one of the Holy Trinity’s missions is to ensure that every person that walks through the door is treated with respect and dignity and that Fair Foods aligns with this mission.
“The main reason was to become more tightly connected with the Fenway community,” Arida said. “We have our parish community, but our parish community is transitive. By hosting Fair Foods we tighten the links of our relationship with the neighborhood … they get to know us and we get to know them.”
Murphy said other non-profits have also adopted the idea of using imperfect, surplus food to combat food insecurity in Boston, giving it to those in the community that live on a fixed income or just looking for sustainable alternatives.
“All these startups are like ‘we love ugly produce,’ and we’re like “we’ve been loving ugly produce,” Murphy said.
Visit Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral every other Wednesday from 3 to 5 p.m. and the First Parish Church of Dorchester every Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. to volunteer. Each person that helps also gets a 12-pound bag of produce to take home.