Dairy Companies Donate 22,000 Meals to Feeding San Diego School Pantries

More than 30 dairy executives spent two hours sorting and packing lunches in San Diego as the IDFA Foundation and several leading dairy companies donated 12,960 units of shelf-stable milk and $6,000 to Feeding San Diego. The combined contribution will support more than 22,000 meals, and the service event produced 5,000 pounds of food for the nonprofit’s school pantry program.

The scale matters because Feeding San Diego says more than 100,000 children in San Diego County are food insecure, and more than 50 schools are waiting for a pantry. The nonprofit has committed to opening 100 school pantries countywide by 2030, and it expanded the program to 58 schools across 17 districts in 2025 after adding 21 more schools the year before. In 2024, 17 new school pantries opened, including one at Berry Elementary School.

Feeding San Diego says the school pantry model is built around convenience as much as volume. Pantries bring nutritious food directly to local schools where families already gather, and on distribution days they operate like free farmers’ markets. The program typically runs twice a month and is often managed by school staff or parent volunteers, which makes repeat donations and reliable product mix more valuable than a one-day handoff.

The event also showed how corporate volunteer labor can be tested as a real logistics tool, not just a photo opportunity. Feeding San Diego is the region’s only Feeding America partner food bank and says nearly 400,000 people in San Diego County are facing hunger. Established in 2007, the organization has built its school pantry expansion around a simple operational logic: put food in places families already trust, then keep it moving through regular distribution.

For the IDFA Foundation, the San Diego effort fit a broader push that it says has provided more than 1 million meals since 2022. A February 2026 donation drive in Southern California helped generate more than 250,000 meals, and a 2025 update said the foundation had already surpassed 730,000 meals since 2022. Andrew Jerome, who became executive director of the foundation effective March 16, said the group is focused on reducing hunger in San Diego and beyond.

For food-recovery groups, the lesson is practical: shelf-stable product, cash support and employee service time can turn a short volunteer shift into something that actually reaches school pantries. The real test is whether employers keep showing up after the executives leave the room.