SEATTLE —
While most people are sleeping, some folks are already hard at work making sure their neighbors don't go hungry.
"This is United Way's DoorDash delivery model," said Sara Seelmeyer, Food Security Program Manager at United Way of King County. "We partner with Safeway and local food banks as well as DoorDash to provide home delivery of groceries to households in need across King County."
"Since COVID-19 started about 1 in 3 people in Washington have reached out for food support in the last 9 months and so we're really seeing increased rates of hunger across the community."
To help combat those rising numbers crews from Safeway start packing boxes of food long before the sun comes up.
"We start on Monday mornings at 3 AM. And we usually do 4 people 8 hours,” said Chelle Jackson, Store Manager for Safeway in Rainer Beach. "Each box has about 23 items in it. Anything you could possibly need to make more than one meal."
Once the boxes are packed, drivers from the food delivery service DoorDash arrive to pick up the precious cargo.
"You'll come here, show the folks that are working here what your order is. It can be a couple of boxes for a couple of houses. Most often it's a chain of eight to ten boxes for eight to ten households," said Tim Stanford a DoorDash driver.
"They load it up on a cart, I pull it out to my car, load it in the car and then I just go from one to the next, to the next, to the next. We do the setup as no contact deliveries. When you get to the location you call the person who's to receive the box. It's all easy and it goes through very quickly."
Seelmeyer says they are serving 2,300 people per week, and plan to expand to 3,000 people a week by the end of the year.
For everyone involved in the program, helping your neighbors when they need you most make these deliveries extra special.
"You're not just making a buck, you're actually doing something good," said Stanford.
If you'd like to financially help support this program you can donate here and pick: Give to Provide Food Relief.