Community Loaves volunteers can help build awareness and spread the word by hosting an outreach booth at a neighborhood farmers' market, seasonal festival, or other local event.
Each time we "show up" in our Communities, the visibility helps us attract more bakers. And more bakers means more bread for our partner food banks.
We make hosting a booth easy! Our event kit should have everything you need (but you can send a request for additional elements, and we'll do our best)!
Getting Started
Gather the following information, preferably two months in advance:
- Event details: date, location, audience type, and expected foot traffic, timeframe including set-up and break-down.
- Volunteer support: booths are more fun with a team! Aim for 3–4 people per shift (and 2-3 hour shifts). Create Volunteer Tasks for tabling the event to make it easy for hub members to sign up.
- Bread/Cookie Samples: This is the key to engagement. Everyone loves a free taste of something delicious. We'll talk you through how many loaves and how many energy cookies to have on hand. *Note we slice the bread into quarters, and the Energy cookies are cut into bite-sized samples. Learn more about sampling below.
- Food Bank Participation: Invite your partnered food bank to participate at the booth. This is such a terrific way to highlight the partnership and hard work being done by our food banks. And the joint outreach lifts awareness of the tremendous work they do.
Email hubsupport@communityloaves.org with the information above and let the planning begin. Before sending the email, read on to familiarize yourself with the resources we provide.
Resources We Provide
Pictured above are several of the items you can request for your outreach event.
- 1 - 10'x10' Pop-up Event Tent - includes weights
- 2 - Banners - two styles - you can use one in the front and another in the back (we have 3 of each kind)
- 3 - Bread & Energy Cookie Posters & large clips for attaching to tent
- 4 - Sampling Supplies - Risers for the samples, sampling cups
- 5 - Tables & Tablecloths - Tabletop signs
- Aprons for Community Loaves volunteers to wear
Not pictured
- Take-home flyers with QR code
- Bread Slicing Board
- Disposable food safety gloves
- Need something special? We'll do what we can to support your efforts.
How to Request Event Supplies
Email us at hubsupport@communityloaves.org
- Email your request 60 days in advance of the event date.
- NOTE: heaver items (pop-up canopy, tables) are only available to hubs along the flour truck delivery route. The smaller items we may be able to ship to your location if you are not within that range.
- Please include in your email the event date, location, type of venue (indoors/outdoors), space constraints, type of event (farmers market, festival, food bank), and anticipated audience size.
Handing Out Samples
Samples are the best way to hook event attendees to your table. We consider samples essential for a productive and engaging event.
Food Sampling Requirements
Although samples are a key ingredient to a successful event, a challenge is that events and their organizers do not adhere to a standard set of requirements. The ability to provide samples and the parameters for meeting specific safety requirements will vary. You will need to confirm the requirements directly from the event organizer.
- Shelf-stable items like our bread and energy cookies typically do not require any form of cold storage.
- Personnel will want to know that there won't be any bare-hand contact with the items.
- We provide gloves and sample cups to assist with the effort.
- Typically, we slice bread or portion out cookies directly at the event. This way, you can prepare just what you need in real-time, retaining whole loaves and cookies for donation to the food bank in the event they are not needed.
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Additional Variables:
- Food Handlers' Permit - the need for a representative to have a current food handler permit also varies. We will help you navigate the necessary steps.
- Hand Washing Stations - some event have stations positioned for general access others require a station at the booth. The event organizer is the best one to contact about what you will need.
How many loaves and cookies will you need?
This is not an exact science, and often we bring too much to the event. Gratefully, overages can be donated to our partnered food banks. Here is the math.
- 56 samples from a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread can be sliced more or less into 14 slices and each slice is quartered.
- 4 samples from a cookie.
- A couple of whole loaves and a couple of packaged cookies for the display are a great touch.
Creating Volunteer Tasks for Energy Cookie and Bread samples kneaded is a great way to ask for these contributions. Volunteers will receive both a credit for their time and the baked items they donated.
How to build the Tiered Sampling Tray
Volunteer Recruitment & Signups
Outreach events require a few energetic volunteers. The number of volunteers needed certainly depends on how long the event runs.
Here are best practices for securing volunteers:
- Determine how many volunteer shifts you need. We recommend 2-3 hour shifts with 3-4 people per shift. Be sure to include set-up and break-down time.
- Build your volunteer tasks to facilitate sign-up. See how to use this tool here. Creating the tasks on the website allows bakers to self-select into open spots and you to track sign-ups and later send an organized thank you!
- Create an additional set of volunteer tasks to request donations of bread or cookies from hub members for use as samples. There are templates for these tasks in the Volunteer Task tool in your Hub Leader Toolkit
What to Expect - Delivery & Timeline
Once we receive your request, we’ll follow up with any questions and help you plan your booth
- We will email you an organizing document to help get everything ready for the event, and work with you to determine numbers of samples, fliers, etc. needed.
- We'll confirm your Event Kit contents and prepare your materials.
- Delivery & Pickup Options
- Preferred Option - Pick up at Flour Central - 8730 122nd Ave NE, Kirkland, WA 98033.
- Second Best - we'll send the materials on an upcoming flour truck delivery date.
- Shipping/Mail - this option is for our extended reach markets where the first two options are not feasible. Due to costs and other logistical challenges, not all of the supplies listed are available for shipping.
Once you receive your event items, we recommend doing a "test run" of setting them all up so that everything runs smoothly on the day of the event.
Typically, you will return the items to Flour Central the same way you received them.
We’ll do our best to accommodate your timeline, but the more advance notice we have, the greater our ability to fully support your efforts.