The following is an excerpt from the full podcast interview, which can be found here.
Just give us the number again. You were on track for how many meals this year?
Last year, without October 7th, we probably would have distributed about 3 million cooked meals and about 30 million kilos, so about 70 million pounds of rescued fruits and vegetables. It’s a mega project. It is really big time on par with any of the food banks, anywhere in the world.
Now, when October 7th happened, you were just saying, and I interrupted you and I apologize, but when October 7th happened, so you’d already been through one crisis called COVID. So, you already had a sixth sense of how the world changes when people can’t move, when businesses can’t operate, when people have greater need, et cetera. So, you guys geared up very rapidly to respond to the needs of, the perceived needs, and the foreseen changes from October 7th.
Tragically, we’re a year later, so you can talk now where you’re projecting probably 2024 will be when we get to December in a few months. Compared to the three million meals last year, what’s the number going to be this year? And what’s the nature of the change in the need, and the nature in the change of the availability of food for you?
Okay, so that’s great. So first of all, cooked food, our numbers remain steady, but not because of rescue. We reached out like we did in COVID to our donor base. And also people were throwing money at us in the first few months. Really throwing money at us in the first few months after the war. That slowed down since, understandably. So we made up for what disappeared from rescue, with purchase. And that’s great. That puts money into caterers’ hands, into hotels’ hands, people who always give to us free, and it creates tremendous goodwill. And I hope we never have to do it again, but we understand in Leket that any time there’s some crisis that impacts our ability to rescue food, even though it costs us five times as much to buy it, we’re going to be out there doing it. And again, I hope it’s the last time. So that was really, let’s say, a week later, the middle of October, for the first three or four months. Now it’s almost completely back to normal our rescue. A little bit less in some hotels, a little bit less in some corporate cafeterias, a little more in some army bases, a little less in other army bases.
Basically, we’re back to normal now. And that’s good. That shows that the State of Israel continues to be resilient. Obviously, we understood on October 8th, we are going to war. And from many visits I had with my son, my late son-in-law, my chayal boded– my lone soldier- and others, when I got to Tze’elim (training base)- the first time- I said, “I understand why we cannot drive, like a truck. It’s going to get squashed by a tank or some other massive vehicle.” It just wasn’t the time.
But of course, the army hates waste as well. And so we knew eventually, after things slowly calm down, we’d be back to that. So that’s great. And we hope we’ll continue. We’re buying a few hundred meals a day now just for very specific places we haven’t been able to figure out solutions, but overall, that’s disappeared. Now understand, even just 300 meals a day, you’re talking 20 shekels a meal times 300, times 5 or 6 days a week…. even just that little bit is hundreds of thousands of shekels. So that’s side A. Demand is steady. The complication has been since October 7th, getting the food to the people who need it, who are maybe not where they used to be.