Northfield, VT– A Northfield couple is helping families and individuals get a healthy meal on the table. With a growing need for food access programs, Jonathan and Lisa Burr aim to fight hunger in their community, and beyond.
Through their recently started non-profit called ‘Feed Every Need,’ the Burrs get healthy, pre-packaged meals out to community members who need it.
Catering business owners by trade, helping others is something that comes naturally to Jonathan and Lisa.
“It’s very gratifying to do this kind of work, it just feels really good to be helping people,” says Lisa Burr.
Operating out of Northfield since May 2023 — when Feed Every Need officially became a non-profit — the Burrs are now serving 800 meals per week. The meals are then hand-delivered to several locations throughout Central Vermont.
“It feels really good to do something that you love to do, which is to make recipes, healthy, satisfying meals, and then give it away to someone who needs it,” Lisa Burr says.
The Burrs began cooking ready-to-serve meals under the ‘Everyone Eats’ program during the pandemic. But that program only fed people for so long, reaching its end in March of last year.
Lisa says, however, hunger doesn’t simply go away.
“We found out pretty quickly just how food insecure Vermont is — not only here in Vermont — but in Vermont alone, it’s just surprising,” Lisa says.
So, the Burrs made the quick decision to keep up that work, which they say is necessary.
Around 175 nutritionally balanced meals are made daily. Jonathan and Lisa say Feed Every Need was funded by a private donor to get off the ground at first, but they’re applying for grants to continue to sustain the service.
Down the line, Jonathan says he wants to expand the program to more counties, and eventually make deliveries right to the door of anyone in need.
“It’s something we’re able to do, and we do love doing it, so it adds something to our lives, to be able to know that we’re doing that,” says Jonathan Burr.
They say they don’t often get to see the people they serve in-person but hear from the distributors that the meals are well received in the community.