March & April, 2026

After the excitement of our super pantry's first anniversary celebrations (reported in the last issue), it was time for a little spring cleaning.

Luckily, we had the help of a great group from Linde plc, who took time off from making industrial gases and other important stuff to make the pantry look like new again. Fun fact: Linde supplied the liquid oxygen and nitrogen for the Artemis II moon launch!

Of course, we couldn't let the Linde folks do all the work, so the Daily Bread Cleaning Club were out in full force as well. Here are Guen and Gregg having altogether too much fun.

At Daily Bread, if there is one thing we love more than pie, it is a pie chart. A pie chart can make a lot of indigestible data easier to absorb, while also revealing some surprising insights. Take a look at this example we baked earlier:

Obviously, the chart shows where our food comes from. But like a good flaky crust pie, there are many more layers.

• In financial terms, it shows the power of a relatively small unrestricted donation: because we purchase only a small part of our food, we can distribute food valued at 10 times our total cash operating budget.
• In other words, a $10 donation allows us to distribute $100 of food!
• It also helps explain why the food we have available varies so much from one week to the next: we only have complete control over the food we purchase from commercial sources.
• Put another way, while we strive to offer a "shopping" experience that offers the dignity and respect of a regular store, we are a pantry, not a supermarket: we cannot, and probably should not, try to match the range of food found in Stop & Shop.
• The 9% of "rescued" food reminds us that a very important part of our mission is to reduce food waste. Yes, some of our rescued food may ultimately have to be composted, but the majority is perfectly good food that might otherwise head to a landfill.
• Finally, it demonstrates how reliant we are on our food bank partners, and especially on Connecticut Foodshare. That is not a bad thing, but it does mean we must try to obtain the maximum amount of food possible from CT Foodshare, most of which is free to us. Not always as easy as it sounds! Click on the picture below if you'd like to read a lighthearted take on the ordering process.

Some on the team thought the boxes must contain two arrows, and possibly a small ruler, but it turned out they were full of Trader Joe’s cookies. Others speculated that the arrows must be pointing to something. But what? And wouldn’t that depend on which way the boxes were stacked? Another team member, an amateur Egyptologist, said he had seen similar hieroglyphs on a Pharaoh’s tomb. Pharaohs were famously short, so that would explain the small ruler part. And perhaps the cookies were intended to provide sustenance in the afterlife. Against this, the “Best Before” date was a while ago, but not the 4,000 years since pyramid-building and post-death snacking were in vogue. So we are at a loss.

If you can help the team figure this out, let us know!

Hopefully, everyone who follows Daily Bread on Facebook or Instagram got a chuckle over our April 1 post. But did you know the accompanying image was styled after the work of Australian artist Herbert Badham, and in particular his 1936 painting Breakfast Piece? Probably not, but now you can impress all your frenemies by casually dropping that factoid at your next cocktail party. You are welcome.

T-shirt season is almost upon us. And we've got a great new design for 2026 featuring Daily Bread Bob. But here's the catch: to qualify immediately for a free shirt, you must have worked at least 6 shifts in 2026. We'll be sending out an email to this elite group very soon, but there is still time to make the cut. Sign up to volunteer now!

World-famous potato, the "Pride of Idaho," stopped by the pantry recently, and proved to be so large that it took all the strength of Ivy and her Mom, Dana, to hold it up. Unfortunately, due to an administrative mix-up, the Pride of Idaho got twice-baked shortly after this photo was taken, and not in a 4/20 sort of way.

Look at the wonderful creations made by members of The Daily Bread Mosaic Club, under the expert tutelage of Pattie T. What a talented group of volunteers we have!

You'd think that giving away free food would be easy work. But that depends on the type of food you are trying to give away - and sometimes we need to deploy a little marketing from our best people. Here are Marinete and Etta ready to introduce our unsuspecting guests to the charms of the tilapia hotdog.

Keeping the 24/7 operation that is Daily Bread running smoothly means we always need to be on the lookout for more high-quality help. Here are Debbie, Maureen, Emmett, and Lauren at Ridgefield's recent Nonprofit Fair, ready with merch, games, and a variety of other "special skills" to convince new prospects that the pantry is where it is at.