Recently, Holliston’s Council on Aging through The Center, entered a partnership with a food recovery service that brings fresh perishable foods to Holliston. This service is free and provided by Spoonfuls. Every Thursday, Spoonfuls collects food from area donors (grocery stores, wholesale outlets, farms, etc.) and brings this directly to The Center.
Below is a sample of the products Spoonfuls delivers.
Perishable items are sorted by The Center staff and stored in a refrigerated case in the dining room with less perishable items (like the bananas above) placed on a table in the main room. Below, The Center Director Cynthia Listewnik (left) and Asst. Director Laura Parmensi (right) sort and stock the perishable items.
The photos show a variety of dairy, produce, and meats. Each weekly varies on availability – not unlike the baked goods that have been donated by local groceries for the past several years. Spoonfuls communicates with staff at The Center to match what items they’ve recovered that day with what best suits their clients’ needs, providing a valuable use for food that might otherwise go to waste.
Typically, the Thursday Spoonfuls delivery arrives between 11am-2pm. Items remain available until they are depleted or still safe for use. Spoonfuls also provides date label guidelines (below) as a resource for The Center and its clients to determine whether food is still good to eat.
While The Center is the local distribution site, ALL Holliston residents can take advantage of this new resource.
Residents are asked to limit their selections to one grocery bag week – with a limit of one each of the following items (when available): milk, packaged salad, packaged cut fruit, meat item, container of eggs. One – two prepared meals, two – three pieces of fruit, zucchini, or potatoes.
More about Spoonfuls: The following is an excerpt from their website – https://spoonfuls.org/
“Spoonfuls is the largest food recovery operation of its kind in New England. As a nonprofit, our mission is to facilitate the recovery and distribution of healthy, fresh food that would otherwise be discarded. Our team works to efficiently deliver this food to those organizations where it can have the greatest impact and to address the health, environmental, and economic effects of wasted food on our community.
The vast majority of the food we deliver we “recover” from food donors like grocery stores, wholesalers, farms, farmers’ markets, school and corporate cafeterias, and stadiums, that have excess or unsold product – primarily perishable foods like fruits and vegetables, dairy, and lean meats. Food is often close-dated, but we get to it while it’s still good to eat and distribute it (same day) to community organizations across Massachusetts that serve neighbors facing food insecurity. We never “bank” food.
“Since 2010, Spoonfuls has kept over 40 million pounds of good food out of the waste stream. In 2025 alone, Spoonfuls recovered over 6.2 million pounds of good food, and we’re on track to recover another 7 million pounds in 2026. Find out what that means for people, planet, and our partners.”
