UPS delivers five millionth meal to struggling families

Logistics leader UPS announced that it has delivered its five millionth meal to struggling families in the US impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Partnering with food and logistics company McLane Global, the duo have created the ‘Emergency Meals-to-You’ programme, designed to provide healthy, nutritious and storable food items to countryside-based students and their families. 

The full programme features collaboration from the USDA, the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty and PepsiCo. Augmented by the UPS Foundation’s logistics solution, the scope of the project hopes to negate the serious isolating effects of lockdown.

Utilising agile supply chains

Each meal kit delivered by the initiative is structured to provide students with two weeks’ worth of food supplies, enough for 20 meals (10 breakfasts and 10 lunches). The food itself consists of cereal, UHT milk, juice, fruit, snacks and entrees. More details available here.

The programme has, so far, proved successful for the collaborators, who credit well-structured supply chains as the primary enabler of its achievement. 

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“In just six weeks, UPS developed and deployed an agile solution now enabling us to bring millions of meals to children,” said Kate Gutmann, UPS Chief Sales and Solutions Officer.

“UPS brought the logistics expertise and the operational capabilities that are enabling this program to continue to grow and feed more children each week. I am proud of the UPS team who demonstrated expertise, speed and service performance to this critical area of need.”

Similarly, Denton McLane, Chairman of McLane Global, expressed satisfaction with the results of the company’s partnership with UPS and enthused the continuing importance of their project.

“Reaching five million meals delivered is another important milestone as we continue to ramp up production so no child goes hungry during this challenging period,” he said.

“UPS has been an exceptional partner and vital to the overall success of this program. We’re working to get these meals to students as quickly as possible and watching a UPS truck pull up to one of our facilities is like watching the baton pass from our team to theirs.”

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