The annual Foodstock NJ food drive has gained so much momentum that it is being moved from a private home to a firehouse in Colts Neck this year.
Foodstock NJ is a local nonprofit charity organization that seeks donations of food for individuals and families in need.
The organization’s sixth annual food drive will be held from 1-7 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Colts Neck Fire Department Fire Company No. 1 headquarters, 88 Route 537, Colts Neck. Donations of food will be accepted at the firehouse.
For more information about donations, visit www.foodstocknj.org/donations.
Bob Swisher, the president of the organization, said the group’s mission is to facilitate the movement of food from those who have been blessed to those who are in need, and to inspire future generations to do the same.
Previous editions of Foodstock were held in the back yard of Swisher’s home in Freehold Township. The success of the effort led organizers to move the event to a larger venue.
Swisher said the organization started six years ago when his daughter, Maura, donated food to a local food pantry, but wanted to do more.
“She said she enjoyed the work, but there was not a lot of food on the shelves at the pantry to be given away,” Swisher said. “So I told her we would do something about that.”
Foodstock consists of a group of friends and volunteers from the Freehold Township area and was initially called “Ton of Fun,” he said.
The organizers of the first food drive set a goal to collect 2,000 pounds of food and ended up collecting more than 6,000 pounds of food that was donated to a food pantry.
Swisher said Foodstock was initially planned as a one-time event, but after the first one proved successful the group’s members decided to do it every year. More bands were added to the entertainment lineup.
“It was at that time that group member Henry Lubas came up with the idea of calling it Foodstock,” Swisher said. “It was a take-off on Woodstock, except we had food.”
During the last five years, he said, donations have helped to support Lunch Break in Red Bank and the Open Door Food Pantry in Freehold Borough.
Jeanne Yaecker, the executive director of the Open Door Food Pantry, Freehold, said, “They have been wonderfully generous with cash and food donations. We feel very blessed that they include us in the program and it is a great help to our pantry, especially at this time of year.” Gwen Love, the executive director of Lunch Break, Red Bank, said Foodstock “provides a tremendous amount of help and support during a really tough time of the year. The donations are just really spot on, especially in reference to timing.”
Swisher said, “Over the first five years we have raised more than 125,000 pounds of food for local pantries and more than $50,000. We have been extremely successful in getting well over 100 teens and other children to help out the needy.”
Swisher said for every 25 pounds of food that is donated at Foodstock, a guest will receive a raffle ticket that can win New York Giants or New York Jets tickets.
He said once the food has been weighed at the Colts Neck firehouse it will be boxed and loaded onto a tractor-trailer.
“The tractor-trailer is donated by Lowy’s moving service which has an offshoot called Move For Hunger,” Swisher said. “They help groups like ours get food to people in need.”
The Foodstock drive is the main event coordinated by Foodstock NJ, but there are other ways the organization collects food, such as neighborhood drops, soccer tournaments, collecting food at schools, and more.
For more information, visit http://www.foodstocknj.org/home.