Marin Community Fridges
Sitting outside a house in San Rafael’s Gerstle Park neighborhood, a bright blue refrigerator offered free food to those who walked by, painted with the words: “This fridge belongs to you, and so does what’s inside. Take some, leave some, this fridge will provide. Este refrigerador esta para todos. Toa comida. Deja comida. La comunidad se cuida y se ama.”
Though that bright blue fridge has since been replaced with another, the words painted on that first fridge sum up the philosophy behind the burgeoning “community fridge” movement: to make food available to hungry neighbors through mutual aid, without bureaucracy or judgment. No questions asked. Just the motto, “Take what you need, leave what you don’t.”
“There is an abundance of resources in Marin,” says Sabrina Socorro, one of the people behind the local organization Marin Community Fridges (MCF). Yet, according to the SF-Marin Food Bank, somewhere around 49,000 Marin County residents (that’s one in five) are in need of food assistance—right now.
“Why is anyone hungry in Marin when Marin is one of the wealthiest counties in the country?” asks Socorro.
Socorro is part of an intergenerational group of Marin residents— spanning Novato, San Rafael, Mill Valley, West Marin and San Geronimo—who, after hearing about other community fridges popping up across the country, understood that there was need for them right here in our own area and formed the nonprofit in the summer of 2020. MCF’s goal, according to its website, is “to provide 24/7 access to free, fresh and nutritious food.”
“If you see your neighbor taking five cartons of eggs [from the fridge] you don’t ask why,” Socorro says. “There is no hierarchy and no policing of each other.”
In early August 2020, the group began requesting volunteers and donations through social media and GoFundMe. Just over three weeks later, MCF’s first community fridge opened in San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood. This first location was hosted by a small bakery, Panaderia Bendicion de Dios.
While the primary goal of MCF is to make food available to those who need it, its secondary goal is to create community. “It’s important to have fridges in communities where participants live or have a connection to better understand the community’s needs and to better engage residents,” Socorro says. And it’s important for fridges to be hosted by a local business (or a private residence, in the case of the Gerstle Park fridge) in an area that is easily accessible. People who live in the community also help with the cleaning of their local fridge, and with the sorting and organizing of its contents.
There are now three community fridges and one community pantry in Marin. All the fridges themselves were donated or purchased used using donated funds, and donated funds pay for electricity and other costs of maintaining the fridges. Local community members are hired to make the fridges beautiful and special to their location.
After learning about MCF’s work, Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown reached out to Congregation Rodef Sholom’s community partners Venetia Valley School and Old Gallinas Children’s Center, and together they met with Socorro to discuss locating a community fridge somewhere in their area. “They contacted us for some support and guidance,” Socorro says. “We found them a fridge and collaborated with them to help them get started.”
“Together with our community partners, we made decisions on the host site, volunteer coordination, health and safety protocols for the fridge, ingredient list, fridge upkeep and maintenance and more. We had significant community support and involvement,” says Rosen-Brown. Their fridge is now located on the grounds of the Rodef Sholom synagogue.
In April 2021, MCF helped to create its first community pantry, located in front of Coyote Coffee at 215 Shoreline Highway in Mill Valley. The pantry is constructed of four metal lockers that hold dry goods like canned food and grains, as well as hygiene products. The lockers are kept locked, but the key is always accessible.
“It’s actually highly used,” says Greg Batlin, owner of Coyote Coffee, regarding the pantry, adding that people also regularly drop things off to replenish. “There’s a variety of people. Most of the people who use it are families or people in their 60s and 70s.”
Sustainable Exchange of Novato also hosted a community pantry from March 2021 until the city shut the pantry down in September saying it violated the city’s rules on outdoor retail displays. The pantry had been built by Sustainable Exchange owner Dan Maher and his high school—aged son, Will Roth.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Success of the community fridges and pantry depends on the community to keep the fridge stocked with good-quality and nutritious food. “If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t donate it,” Socorro says. She also says that some of the people who obtain food from the fridges are unhoused, so they may not have access to kitchens or even to something as simple as a can opener. Donations of cans that have pull tabs as well as grab-and-go items are appreciated.
“Since October 2020, we’ve been doing an ongoing weekly grocery shopping trip using donated funds. Our volunteer shoppers have an understanding of what the community wants in the fridge, from direct feedback and requests,” Socorro says.
MCF also partners with the Agricultural Institute of Marin (AIM), the organization that operates the Thursday and Sunday Marin Farmers’ Markets, among other markets. “One aspect of our mission is to connect farmers with their community,” says Andy Naja-Riese, CEO of AIM, who began speaking with MCF organizers about partnership opportunities in 2020.
Since March 2021, shoppers at AIM’s Sunday Marin Farmers’ Market have been able to purchase additional food for donation to a community fridge. Over 45 vendors now participate in the program, identified by a sign on their booth or table.
“It helps to keep the farmers paid. It also helps to nourish the community,” Naja-Riese says, adding that the fridges allow local residents the ability to access food at any time—with dignity. “Anything we can do to help our farmers succeed, while also nourishing residents; it’s a win-win.”
“At the end of the day, the Marin Fridge staff or volunteers come by and pick up the cheese that was donated by a customer and take it immediately to the fridge,” says Tamara Hicks, owner of Tomales Farmstead Creamery, a farmers’ market vendor and a regular donor to the fridges.
“Cheese was a peasant food once upon a time, but now it is a food that is economically out of the reach of many,” Hicks says. “We wanted to do our part in donating an item that someone might not have the opportunity to enjoy otherwise.”
AIM also partners with MCF through AIM’s Rollin’ Root program, a farmers’ market on wheels that services 11 sites throughout Marin, bringing the farmers’ market directly to those communities. What hasn’t sold at the end of the route on Fridays is donated to MCF fridges. “Fresh, local, often organic, produce,” Naja-Riese says.
At the Rodef Sholom fridge, volunteers sign up to donate food on a rotating basis. The congregation also hosts a CSA dropoff for FEED Sonoma (see their story in this issue) on Saturday mornings. FEED’s Bin box recipients stock the community fridge with fresh produce at their pickup, according to Rabbi Rosen-Brown.
Venetia Valley School hosts a food bank on Tuesdays and stocks the Rodef Sholom fridge with fresh food at that time, according to Maria Gramajo, a family advocate for the K—8 school. Most of the groceries go fast, according to Delia Lucio, a Head Start family advocate who works with the Old Gallinas Children’s Center, a child development center operated by Community Action Marin. “The fridge is seen as a reliable and convenient place for local families to access food, as well as drop off any extra food they can’t use,” she says. “All the families that have been able to reach for extra food are thankful. It is a relief knowing that this is accessible food.”
“This mutual aid project has demonstrated that the Santa Venetia community is willing to work together to, at the very least, address hunger,” Gramajo says.
“The food redistribution model promoted by MCF is such an important one,” adds Rosen-Brown. “It connects community [and] brings us into closer relationship with one another. … Solving the issue of widespread hunger and food scarcity requires broader systems thinking, but community care and mutual aid is one vital part of this system.”
“We want to build trust, create understanding and engagement so that we know that the community will take care of its fridges,” Socorro adds.
