CBO Spotlight
Meet a community-building organization at the forefront of Oregon’s local disaster mitigation efforts.
Rogue Food Unites
Rogue Food Unites (RFU) was formed in 2020 out of the dual disasters of the Almeda and Obenchain fires and the impacts of COVID-19 on local communities. RFU now contracts with the State of Oregon to supply hot meals, food boxes, and solidarity cards in Deschutes, Douglas, Klamath, Josephine, and Jackson Counties. RFU has provided more than 2 million meals to displaced and impacted people, including 600,700 hot meals served at recovery sites and delivered to hotels, RV parks and temporary homes, and 38,756 meal kits and provision boxes. Additionally, they have provided fresh produce to more than 100,000 individuals.
Tell us a little about Rogue Food Unites' model, and why it's been so successful?
When disaster strikes, everyone deserves food made with care—prepared with kindness and rooted in the strength of our local food community. In times of disaster, RFU procures hot meals from restaurants that are local to where the disaster occurs. The goal of this model is to support businesses local to the disaster and keep money in the community in which the disaster occurred. Economic investment in communities immediately after a disaster helps contribute to the rebuilding efforts.
A guiding principle of Rogue Food Unites’ work is that every person deserves access to high-quality, organic, and nourishing food. That commitment does not change during times of crisis. When emergencies arise, RFU continues to show up for our community with the same care, dignity, and quality that guides our work every day.
“Throughout all of our programs, we don’t just want to get food to people, we want to make sure it’s good food, and that people feel good getting it.”
Relationships we have forged with our community since 2020 have helped us transition from where we started to the work we're doing now–allowing our passion for community resilience and disaster response to support our everyday food security work and to prepare our community for disaster with dignity and care, through our No Cost Farmers Market and Freeze Dried Meals programs.
Throughout all of our programs, we don’t just want to get food to people, we want to make sure it’s good food, and that people feel good getting it. Our belief that the quality and type of food people have, and their experience in receiving it all impact people's health, quality of life, and overall happiness is what makes our work feel impactful and successful.
Any updates, or anything you'd like funders and others to know?
In June 2024, RFU completed the construction of a commercial kitchen to develop a line of Freeze-Dried Meals as an innovative approach to disaster preparedness that addresses a critical gap identified during the 2020 Oregon wildfires: the lack of nutritious, scalable, shelf-stable, tasty meals for emergency response.
Ultimately, success for the Freeze-Dried Meals Program means transforming disaster response from labor-intensive volunteer coordination to streamlined distribution, replacing dozens and dozens of volunteers, multiple vehicles, and complex logistics with one truck delivering thousands of meals to emergency shelters. This efficiency multiplies community resilience while maintaining RFU's core values of local procurement and high-quality nutrition.
“We believe that more investment in preparation and prevention is going to be significant in continuing to build community resilience, both day-to-day and in times of disaster.”
The goal of the Freeze-Dried Meals program is threefold: to provide healthy, flavorful nourishment to disaster-affected people; to strengthen the local food system by prioritizing locally sourced ingredients in production; and to act as a sustainable source of income for RFU’s community-facing programming, including the Farmers Market.
In addition to preparing our state for disaster through quality, tasty, and easy-to-prepare food, this program will reduce food insecurity and create economic and community resilience.
In times of financial hardship–and in efforts to respond to emergencies as they arise–prevention and preparation are the first things to go unfunded or underfunded. We believe that more investment in preparation and prevention are going to be significant in continuing to build community resilience, both day-to-day and in times of disaster.
As the boots on the ground–what are you seeing this year? Or expect to see this summer?
We are already seeing ongoing climate anxiety for this summer.
I always wanted to ask someone working in food distribution: Is there a universally "least favorite" vegetable?
This year, our universally hated veggie is parsnips 😉