Wegmans Food Markets kicked off its companywide Fill the Bus/Fill the Backpack scan campaign to help ensure school-aged children continue to have access to adequate food during the summer months when they lose access to free and reduced-price school lunches.

The campaign raises money for the company’s 48 Feeding America food bank partners to help them stock their summer feeding and backpack programs. Customers can donate any amount at checkout, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to each store’s local food bank.

On Tuesday, June 11, the Eastern Produce Council hosted its 49th annual golf outing in Branchburg, NJ, at Fox Hollow Golf Club.

Following lunch and a round of Golf, there was a dinner and prize raffle with winners of the day awarded.  EPC Board Member Rich Martin served as the master of ceremonies. He recognized sponsors of the event, including Gold Sponsors (Dole, Genpro, Giorgio and Katzman), Silver Sponsor (Taylor Farms/Earthbound Fam), Bronze Sponsors (A&J Produce, Affinity Group and Trucco), Putting Contest Sponsor (Decas Farms), and a host of many others highlighted around the golf

Nearly 500 ShopRite and Wakefern Food Corp. team members and their families volunteered at the 2024 Special Olympics New Jersey Summer Games at The College of New Jersey. ShopRite and Wakefern have been sponsors of Special Olympics New Jersey for more than 30 years, providing meals, activities and volunteer contributions each year.

“It is an honor to work with Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization that supports incredibly talented athletes and inspires us all,” said Mike Stigers, president of Wakefern Food Corp., the retailer-owned cooperative and logistics and merchandising arm for

Evan Ehlers was a student at Drexel University in 2018 when he conjured up the idea of using his dining hall meal ticket to donate the food he wasn’t going to eat that semester to those in need.

“I would put the food in my car and drive around Center City Philadelphia handing it out,” he said, noting that it gave him a first-hand look at poverty. “For a lot of people, it was the only meal they were going to have that day.”

That experience caused Ehlers, who was studying entrepreneurship in college, to dive deeper into poverty, its root causes and potential solutions. “Initially, I was only

Thx! embraces the philosophy that most retailers and consumers want to do good, and according to recent research, shoppers favor retailers that are “doing good” the most — especially when it’s at little or no cost to them.

With major retailers, including SEG/Winn-Dixie, Sam’s Club and Walmart, offering Thx! products, shoppers can buy produce items like Kiwi Kings from FruVeg, SunFed Bell peppers, Classic Harvest citrus and more — all offering shoppers the chance to fulfill a life-changing dream for the farmworkers showcased on the products. By scanning the QR codes on the Thx! labels, these

Recently at an apple warehouse in the Yakima Valley, I saw a woman driver pull in to pick up an order. It had been some time since I’d seen a woman driver, and I wondered how many women are in the industry. Some quick research showed that about 10 percent of all truckers are women, and in the produce industry, the number is a bit lower. I figured it’d be male dominated, but these numbers were a bit surprising to me.

Despite the low representation, there is a noticeable and commendable trend of increasing efforts to bring more women into the driver’s seat. This is particularly intriguing given