In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation quickly established an Emergency COVID-19 Response Fund. We directed an initial $3 million in grants to help national partners Feeding America and No Kid Hungry provide food for individuals, students and families whose lives were disrupted by stay-at-home orders.
We quickly followed our initial commitment with additional grants for COVID-19 relief—totaling more than $5 million—to support partners and organizations across the country working to rapidly deploy food and funds to families disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This included $400,000 in grants to select Innovation Fund portfolio companies to help scale solutions to recover and redistribute more surplus food.
In partnership with the Kroger Family of Companies, we also activated a six-week public fundraising campaign for our Emergency COVID-19 Response Fund, raising $1.5 million in donations from generous Kroger customers. 100% of this funding has been deployed to local and regional organizations to help communities recover, including: