How New Haven Keeps Eating During Covid-19

The Wooster Square farmer’s market, now held at Conte West Hills Magnet School on Chapel Street, buzzed with masked figures, leaning in (but not too close) and pointing at gleaming piles of produce: peppers, tomatoes, leafy greens springing up with an airy confidence.

A farmer paused between transactions to spray hands and surface with disinfectant.

Lines stretched even longer for Jitter Bus’s iced coffee, with six feet the norm between each person in the queue.

Everything was familiar and different, like a filter on Instagram, yet everything had also changed.

The early days of the pandemic saw shortages in grocery stores of food of every sort. Lingering shortages of meat continue, as processing plants in the industrial food system flare up with Covid-19 — as many as 900 cases in a single plant in May. Social media popped up with attempted bake after attempted bake of sourdough bread, or increasingly fancy meals, or takeout now modeled as a linchpin of civic duty. Demand at food pantries across the country skyrocketed as millions lost jobs; mutual aid organizations stepped in to address widespread need. Our national food system was shaken, and as such, New Haven’s own food ecosystem has shifted in various directions.

DESK And Colectivo Semilla

For many families, pre-existing food insecurity was exacerbated by the pandemic and its associated mass layoffs. Steve Werlin, executive director of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen — downtown New Haven’s longstanding dinner and pantry program — noted that numbers have increased somewhat in the dinner program and that there has been a constant influx of new clients of the pantry program, with the most dramatic increase mid-April through June.

“In March, DESK worked with several other organizations through the Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN) to develop a new delivery program” — Pantry to Pantry, or P2P — ​“that would enable those who are immuno-compromised to remain home and not have to come to the brick-and-mortar pantries… The program has been largely funded through Yale’s Community Fund for New Haven, and is primarily run out of DESK and Loaves & Fishes, serving approximately 1,100 households weekly, and employing the efforts of nearly 200 volunteers,” Werlin wrote in an email.

He noted that in this time of need, the organizations that work in food assistance found common cause and are now more unified and coordinated across organizations as the pandemic wears on; he is, however, concerned about funding, particularly as the recession drags on.

“How people obtain food is a barometer for overall economic health: as goes the economy, so goes the need for food assistance. Food assistance — pantries, in particular — tend to be the first form of mainstream social service that people access, primarily because it has a very low barrier of entry and very few stumbling blocks. Those who are trying to read the current climate and predict where we’re heading would be wise to keep a close eye on the length of the pantry lines,” he wrote.

Local mutual aid organization Colectivo Semilla has similarly stepped in to orchestrate deliveries of food boxes to families in need, particularly families in the immigrant community — who are sometimes unable to receive aid or benefits, or work high-risk jobs and cannot work for health concerns. Semilla obtains its food by buying it in bulk or through donations. Volunteers then divide the food and box it into family shares. Elizabeth Gonzalez, a coordinator/volunteer/recipient with Semilla (it is a true mutual aid organization, in which volunteers are also recipients) had had a cleaning job but had to stop working out of concern for her health and that of her children. Sitting down with Ariana Shapiro, another organizer with Semilla and Spanish interpreter, Gonzalez set the framework for the organization writ large.

“The collective is not simple — it’s like a family tree of mutual aid … in solidarity with the community,” Gonzalez said. ​“It’s organized by many volunteers who put their little piece of sand in the pile. I receive the boxes of food, which came to me when I needed them the most. I didn’t have work and neither did my husband. It’s only us, and it became very difficult for us to pay for everything. My mom is in Mexico, and I help her out when I can, and I also have four children. Semilla came at exactly the right moment for me. It was great for my family so we could keep paying rent. I also got a little envelope of money so I could keep helping my mother.”

After she receives the food boxes, Gonzalez makes calls to other families in the community and, with the help of her children, helps prepare the boxes for delivery at the organization’s Food Garage at Bregamos Community Theater (see this April Independent article about the garage). Volunteers then deliver boxes to families every Sunday. Semilla currently serves over 300 households. At its peak earlier in the year, the organization helped as many as 600 families each month with food and cash aid to make ends meet. This is a huge undertaking, logistically and financially.

“We buy all the food in the boxes now, and at some point we worry about running out of money,” Shapiro said. ​“We really value giving out those envelopes of cash because people’s lives aren’t just food … right now food is more of a priority.”

Both envision the food program continuing through the pandemic and beyond. Gonzalez underscored that immigrants are extremely vulnerable; many had great need of food assistance even before the pandemic started.

“There’s a lot of people that haven’t gotten benefits because they’re immigrants. They can’t apply for things like food stamps. Our salaries are minimum wage, and it’s more work and more dangerous,” Gonzalez said. ​“For example, I work for a cleaning company, and I’d have to be in contact with people, and it’s very dangerous because I have my children here. I think that Semilla will keep helping and supporting people in one way or another.” Smiling, Gonzalez recalled hearing from families who responded that they no longer needed the boxes and wanted to donate their box to a different family. ​“It’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

Groceries And Restaurants

Meanwhile, for New Haveners who can buy groceries, the food ecosystem has also shifted. Local, non-chain grocery stores like Elm City Market and Edge of the Woods have seen immensely popular delivery programs, with sales of organic foods especially popular for Elm City Market.

Elm City Market Assistant Manager Hannah Pimenta said that in-person sales have stayed high, and there’s an ever-increasing amount of online delivery sales, particularly of produce and other essentials.

“We have what we call Covid items — lentils, dried beans, baking flour, rice, et cetera,” she said. People have also been ​“going crazy for eggs,” and when the news hit that meat processor Smithfield Foods had become an epicenter of Covid-19 infections, people came in looking for alternatives.

“We have local and fresh and don’t carry anything by Smithfield, so people came in looking for a different source for beef. I think that since they were pushed to try something different, they found that the difference in quality and taste was worth the price,” Pimenta said.

Elm CIty Market was in the process of soft launching their delivery program when the pandemic hit; that forced a hard launch, Pimenta said. ​“We just had to roll with the punches and make sure people were able to get what they needed.”

Delivery remains a source of increased sales, especially of produce, which accounts for 70 percent of deliveries. ​“For some people, their shopping is the same, but for others it’s more intentional,” Pimenta said. That said, prepared food sales remain steady at pre-pandemic levels, even as the basic necessities for a well stocked larder are more popular than before.

Intentionality has always been at the heart of the CitySeed farmers’ markets, which afford consumers an opportunity to buy directly from farms and form more meaningful relationships with their food chain. Farms such as Waldingfield Farms in Washington, CT, have seen a 100 percent spike in CSA subscriptions, with many running out of available slots. CitySeed Executive Director Cortney Renton reported that from the first day of the pandemic, the farmers’ markets were often asked after.

“The markets were an interesting position because they were deemed by the state as essential services, but there were also many regulations and public health concerns to address as well,” Renton said. In the early days before peer institutions across the region had rolled out their own guidelines, it was largely up to CitySeed and New Haven to work together to find a solution. ​“We saw a huge demand, really more than we could meet, and eventually … we found a way to make more slots per hour for those who wanted their food.”

That solution turned out to be CitySeed’s preorder-only drive-through winter market, which turned into a walk-in, socially distanced market in early July. Renton noted that some farmers chose to not participate, either out of health concerns or difficulty with the resources required for safe adherence to guidelines.

Now the walk-in market stretches luxuriously along the driveway of Conte West Hills School and sees healthy attendance, in every sense of the word. The smaller Edgewood market is also in full socially distanced swing on Sundays.

Renton credits the early popularity of the drive-through market to food shortages in the grocery store — along with the inherent safety of being in one’s car in addition to a more concerted effort to be in touch with local food. ​“I think there was this surging interest in supporting your local food system,” she said. ​“There’s also a broader movement to support local businesses that extended to food and farmers as well.”

While many New Haveners had been interested in the local food system before, to Renton, Covid-19 added a new layer of meaning. It’s difficult to balance the huge demand for local food with safety, says Renton, but it’s something they’re constantly revisiting. ​“I think we’ve seen the markets as the most consistent example of demand for local food. There’s been an increase in SNAP customers compared to last year as well…. For us it’s encouraging to know that people who weren’t using the markets before or who haven’t been on SNAP are using our markets now.”

CitySeed offers double SNAP value at markets for anyone who spends their SNAP dollars at the market. CitySeed has also functioned as a fiscal sponsor and logistical help for pop-up food pantries and other emergency food systems.

Another trend as the pandemic wears on is the pivot of restaurants into the grocery market. Atticus Bookstore & Cafe unveiled Atticus Market, a (for now) predominantly online store operated out of both its 1082 Chapel St. location and its 360 James St. counterpart. Reed Immer and Charlie Negaro, Jr., cited the perceived need of people to have a well-curated grocery experience, along with the desire to take some corrective steps in the business model of the bookstore and cafe.

Atticus had been in the process of opening a second location in the spring, at first envisioned to be more restaurant than anything else. But the pandemic laid bare the potential costs of running a restaurant. So the team pivoted, and what had been an addition to a restaurant concept — a small market selling curated goods up front — has morphed into the next step for the team. The market helps Atticus be more Covid-19 resilient by supporting their growing back-of-house operations and providing an easy online venue to keep revenue flowing without having to strictly shut down.

“It definitely solidified our thoughts and ideas; the previous rendition of what will be the next Atticus was going to be a big restaurant downtown…. That was an amazing fantasy,” chuckled Negaro. ​“Covid has kept us very honest in this process. It’s very clear what need-to-haves and nice-to-haves are, in getting this spot open. It’s helped us plan.”

Part of this planning was finding a way to bring back staffers laid off at the beginning of the pandemic, and keep food jobs paying a livable wage alive even in economic recession. Atticus Market features locally produced goods, such as Dave’s Angry Sauce (a CitySeed/Collab Food Accelerator alum) in addition to the spectrum of baked goods and cafe food items offered at the Atticus Bookstore and Cafe.

Negaro said that what and how people want their goods seems to change every four weeks.

“The idea of someone coming into a store and purchasing something was unfathomable three months ago. In late June, when we reopened retail downtown, we were operating out of the bakery and it felt safer to have everyone under one roof…. You could tell people were getting stir crazy and weren’t ordering as much and you could tell people were going out to eat more.”

As time went on, the orders started changing. ​“We went from having 90 percent online orders, with big bulk orders of groceries like charcuterie and cheese and tons and tons of fresh-milled flour, to more people walking into the cafe and ordering stuff.”

Then with the shift to a subscription model for bread — the Atticus bread club — things changed again. ​“We are embracing that there is going to be some online future, even after Covid, if it ever ends, and we’re trying to migrate our way through that — it’s ever changing.”

The interviewees for this story all cited some sort of shift in their own relationship with food. For Gonzalez, it’s simply not having to pay for it — she cooks it all the same as she did before the pandemic. Renton noted that she recorded her cooking for a while, and found a new sense of intentionality about it. Werlin’s wife, who now works from home, cooks more, but he has been ​“all hands on deck” since March and sees no signs of stopping. Negaro sighs ruefully and says he eats much more healthily now.

“Gone are the days of Reed catching me eating an entire Da Legna pepperoni pizza on State Street,” he said.