Harvest for Hunter began in the town of Snowmass Village during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, it’s expanded to both Aspen and Basalt and has gone from serving about 7,000 people a year to an expected 2,200 people a month this winter.
Gray Warr is the executive director of the nonprofit.
He spoke with Arts & Culture Reporter Regan Mertz about the organization’s growing reach and expanding clientele.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Regan Mertz: Harvest for Hunger is based in Snowmass Village and was founded by ski bums who live and work in the Roaring Fork Valley but realized the growing disconnect between the less fortunate and the really fortunate.
Can you talk to me about the ski bum lifestyle and how it contributed to that realization and the foundation of the organization?
Gray Warr: I don't know if you met many ski bums, but we're not known for having tons of money. We usually are chasing the dream.
That said, when you transplant yourself to Aspen, you're not usually coming with a lot of money. You're usually chasing the snow, and most of us were living paycheck to paycheck. And food and rent — everything is expensive, and it just makes more sense to pay for rent and heat than it does to pay for food … so, anything that we can do that would make them save some money and eat better.
Mertz: And you took over LIFT-UP’s space in the Pitkin County Senior Services building over the summer because mainly of staffing. You had the staff available to run the food pantry full-time.
How have you managed to keep your staffing so high?
Warr: Great question. The main reason that we were successful was we were able to be open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we are doing that actually without staffing.
So, we are unstaffed. All of our pantries are self-service. There's no stigma, there's no judgment. Come whenever you need food — before, during or after work. You can get whatever you need without the worry of judgment or someone looking over your shoulder.
Mertz: Can you talk to me about actually picking up that food? How does that process work?
Warr: We stock the pantry with two types of things. One is food that we purchase from the Food Bank of the Rockies. That's your shelf-stable products, your canned goods, bags of dry beans. We order that food from the Food Bank of the Rockies, and then we supplement that food with food rescue.
We currently rescue from 18 different locations in the Roaring Fork Valley — that's grocery stores, bakeries, Starbucks, also hotels when they call us, and restaurants when they call us. We've picked up from three different restaurants in the last month. They were closing their doors sadly.
All that food, the food that we purchase, is food that will help you survive. The food that we rescue, that's the food that is expiring but still good. It's the food that helps you thrive.
Mertz: Do you have any thoughts about expanding even further downvalley?
Warr: Our concept, I don't know if it would work at a large scale. We're kind of a niche, small town. We want to stay small and amazing — if that makes sense. We don't want to, at least right now, get big and lose focus of what we're trying to do.
Ski resorts are a great niche area. They're small towns. They have a community that can use it. I definitely don't think that this concept would work in a big city like Denver. I think that we would get overrun because it is a trust-your-fellow-man kind of concept. I think that works better when the community is small.
Mertz: Do you guys get any federal funding for the work that you're doing?
Warr: No, we do not. You hit the nail on the head there. So, there is a funding problem through the federal government. We do not accept federal funding.
Mertz: As a rule?
Warr: Well, it has allowed us to do whatever we need to do to feed the masses. Whenever you accept federal funding, you are now bound to regulations. You have to keep track of who, what, when, where, how. Because we are not federally funded, we don't have to worry about any of that. We don't care where you're from.
If ICE came to the door, we couldn't give them any information because we don't have any information. Food access should be easy, and we try and make it as easy as possible. If you need food, come and get it.
Mertz: Thank you so much for coming in.
Warr: Thank you.
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.
