About Us 2025 | Gleaners Community Food Bank

Our Mission: Providing Households with Access to Sufficient, Nutritious Food and Related Resources.

We accomplish this through collaboration, efficient operations, education, and innovative solutions to achieve a hunger-free community in Southeast Michigan.

We believe hunger can be solved.

We believe people are worth investing in.

We believe “child” and “hunger” are two words that should never go together.

We believe everyone benefits from a hunger-free community.

We believe real change takes courage.

We believe complex problems take collaborative solutions.

We believe in the dignity of every person in the community.

We believe good data enables better decisions.

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Counties We Serve

Headquartered in Detroit, Gleaners serves five Southeast Michigan counties:

Wayne
Oakland
Macomb
Livingston
Monroe

Gleaners provides food to nearly 350 partner soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, schools and other agencies across the region, and supplements the efforts of those partners by offering direct service drive-up grocery distributions. Gleaners further empowers households with food programs and education to help overcome food insecurity. Every dollar donated provides three meals, and 92 percent of our expenses directly support our neighbors facing hunger.

Food Distribution

Gleaners is a vital link between available food and our neighbors experiencing food insecurity. Local and national food producers often have surplus products that go to waste for lack of a way to safely and efficiently bring it to market. Gleaners has developed a very efficient, technologically advanced system to collect, store, and distribute food with very little waste through our state-of-the-art distribution center in Wayne County, supported by our distribution center in Livingston County and our headquarters in Detroit. This process allows Gleaners to handle a tremendous volume of donated food, as well as the fresh produce and milk we purchase, to ensure our communities have access to a variety of healthy, nutritious food.

Our partner agencies face tight budgets and an increasing need for services. Gleaners is devoted to getting surplus food and donated items directly to our partners, saving their organizations time and money so they can focus on better serving their communities. Together, we are increasing the amount of vital, emergency food available to our neighbors and building capacity for service organizations to make an even greater impact toward solving hunger.

Gleaners also hosts direct-service, mobile distributions strategically located throughout our service area to supplement our partner network. These sites, operating on a rotating basis five days per week offer balanced nutrition – including fresh milk, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, lean protein and shelf-stable items – with no appointment necessary, built on a “no-contact,” drive-through model.

Our Vision: End Hunger in Southeast Michigan

Gleaners is committed to distributing nutritious, high-quality food to people in need. In collaboration with our partner agencies, the Feeding America network, and our program partners, Gleaners is driving new solutions to improve the health and well-being of our entire community.

Everyone wins when hunger is solved. When we achieve food security, every positive outcome becomes more likely—from higher graduation rates to increased job retention to better patient health.

Our History

In April of 1977 Gene Gonya co-founded Gleaners Community Food Bank, renting the first floor of a warehouse on Detroit's near eastside, a stone's throw from the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.

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