By GREGORY ZELLER //
One of Long Island’s leading social-services organizations has a new look and a new home base, refreshing its arsenal for the ongoing battle against food insecurity.
Island Harvest Food Bank on Monday unveiled its new branded logo and, more significantly, its new Melville headquarters, with more than 100 VIP guests joining Island Harvest Food Bank President and CEO Randi Shubin Dresner for a ceremonial inauguration.
The colorful new emblem updates the food bank’s slogan (from “Fighting hunger. Touching lives.” to “Nourishing Long Island’s Future”) and highlights its membership in Feeding America, a nonprofit national network of 200-plus food banks that ranks as the nation’s single largest hunger-relief organization.
But the star of Monday’s show was the new headquarters, a 43,560-square-foot multipurpose building on three acres along Spagnoli Road. The facility nearly doubles the size of Island Harvest’s former Hauppauge headquarters and features many operational and user-friendly amenities, including a 4,300-square-foot refrigerator/freezer that clocks in 12 times larger than the fridge/freezer back in Hauppauge.
Randi Shubin Dresner: New look, same healthy outlook.
Feeding America President and Chief Operating Officer Katie Fitzgerald, who attended Monday’s ribbon-cutting event, praised the new HQ, and the professionals who fill it.
“I know that Island Harvest Food Bank and its many volunteers will use this space to more deeply serve their community and expand the incredible services they provide, which are needed now more than ever,” Fitzgerald said.
The Spagnoli Road facility incorporates energy-efficient lighting and HVAC systems, with a “more productive layout and design” improving efficiency in receiving, sorting and storing food. Four loading docks equipped with hydraulic levelers improve loading/unloading safety and proficiency and a high-tech ventilation system is coming soon, helping Island Harvest “maintain a consistent and clean, temperature-controlled environment to help ensure the safety of the food and its staff,” according to the food bank.
Island Harvest, which purchased the new building for $8.1 million in 2021, also has extra space to expand its nutrition-education, benefits-assistance and other social-services programs, with a new workforce-development effort planned for later this year.
That’s all tremendous news for the busier-than-ever food bank, which has stood toe-to-toe with unprecedented – and increasingly dire – levels of Long Island food insecurity over the last several years.
During its last fiscal year (which ended June 30, 2021), Island Harvest supplemented more than 15 million meals for 600,000 Long Island families – year over year, a staggering 83 percent increase in the total amount of food distributed, with more than double the number of Nassau and Suffolk families seeking assistance.
Bag lunch: Even nonprofits need quality branding.
By not only collecting desperately needed food but also addressing the root causes of food insecurity, Island Harvest has gone above and beyond “to put food on the table for the New Yorkers who need it most,” according to State Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball.
“Island Harvest has done tremendous work in their community to bring food to families in need, particularly during the pandemic,” Ball said in a statement.
The commissioner specifically applauded the food bank’s participation in Albany’s Nourish New York program, which connects statewide farmers directly with the food-insecure through networked food banks.
To help draw attention to all this good work, Island Harvest has also refreshed its marketing credentials. In addition to prominently featuring the updated slogan, the new eye-catching logo – created pro-bono by New York City-based Goldstein Group Branding – updates the food bank’s older insignia (a green-and-yellow bar adorned with a single cornstalk) with a bounty of colorful cartoon vegetables and that important Feeding America reference.
Dresner said the new logo perfectly encapsulates the food bank’s past achievements and future hopes.
“Island Harvest Food Bank’s new logo was designed to reflect our evolution over the last three decades,” the president said. “[It] symbolizes our dynamic future while remaining true to our longstanding reputation as a source of healthy food, social services and support to our neighbors in need.”
Dresner – who presided over a ceremony that welcomed representatives of Amazon, National Grid and other corporate sponsors, along with New York Secretary of State Richard Rodriguez, Fitzgerald and representatives of numerous regional feeding programs – said the new slogan, also crafted by the Goldstein Group, similarly hits the mark.
“The logos’ bright colors and depiction of nutritious food and a new tagline reinforce our commitment to a healthier Long Island,” Dresner added. “Terri Goldstein and her team of experts worked with our internal and external marketing professionals to develop a look that personifies Island Harvest Food Bank.”
