Feeding Our Future: Burnsville (re)visited

Your correspondent ventures south of the river, again.

A while back we documented the free-food connections to be found in the south metro suburban city of Burnsville.

1506 Southcross Drive in Burnsville was Subject Premises No. 3 in the first FBI search warrant in the case. The location was a proprietary free-food distribution site run by Feeding Our Future itself. Empire Cuisine was registered as the food vendor.

It’s the middle part of a small suburban strip mall, with a gas station/convenience store on one side and a childcare center on the other. All of the parking spaces in front of the 1506 address are reserved for childcare-related parking.

The FBI observed no food distribution at this location during their stakeouts. Feeding Our Future CEO Aimee Bock told the Star Tribune that the FBI must have missed the Saturday-only distribution occurring at that location.

The FBI documented that Feeding Our Future claimed to have served 50,000 meals there during November 2021, or more than 12,000 a week. With only a four-hour window one day a week for food delivery, the logistics of this strip mall site suggest that distribution on that scale would not be possible.

1013 Cliff Road E. is one of seven storefronts in a low-rise industrial/warehouse building in Burnsville. The majority of the building is given over to automotive-related businesses. There is no spare parking at the location, as almost all available spaces are taken up by vehicles awaiting service.

Nonetheless, there are four free-food distribution sites registered at that address, two each for Feeding Our Future and their rival nonprofit network Partners in Nutrition. All four efforts were registered under the Federal Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP).

Given the physical limitations of the site, no food distribution effort of any size could have taken place here, much less 5,000 per day.

We discussed the nonprofit All Somali Community Worldwide in our last post. Delta Community Care is a nonprofit founded in 2021 and based in St. Paul. A Daryeel Health Services also hosted another site under Feeding Our Future.

It’s not clear what the initials “B and B” stand for, but they are credited with hosting three sites under the Feeding Our Future banner.

Inevitably, there are also three personal care assistant (PCA) companies located in this small office. Two of these are active vendors to the state Department of Human Services.

Just west of the site, still on Cliff Road, is this city park.

Feeding Our Future registered the location as a summer free-food distribution site as well as under the CACFP. Under CACFP, the park hosted a second distribution site under the nonprofit Diamond Child Help, which was founded in 2021 in Minneapolis.

At least there’s parking.