Find out how the Food Bank’s Extra Helpings Program rescues nearly 29 million pounds of food a year to feed families across LA County.

Every day, grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants across Los Angeles County have perfectly good food left over. At the same time, roughly 1 in 4 people in LA County experience food insecurity. The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank’s Extra Helpings Program exists to close that gap, one delivery at a time.

What Is the Extra Helpings Program?

In the early 2000s, the Food Bank created a program called Extra Helpings to redirect good, nutritious food from landfills and into the stomachs of hungry children, families, and older adults. Instead of routing every donation through a central warehouse, Extra Helpings connects local grocery stores and other food donors directly with nearby Food Bank partner agencies, pantries, shelters, and community organizations that already serve people in their own neighborhoods.

It means perishable items like produce, dairy, bread, and prepared foods move quickly from the shelf to a family’s table, before they have a chance to spoil. Partner agencies pick up donations on a regular schedule, weigh and log what they receive, and turn around to distribute it at food pantries, many of which run at least once a week specifically to keep this fresh food flowing.

In 2025, thanks to 523 food donors, Extra Helpings ensured that more than 28.9 million pounds of food were redirected from landfills to stomachs by enabling 161 partner agencies to collect nutritious, perishable, and prepared food directly from donors.

Every one of those pounds represents food that didn’t end up in a landfill, and a meal that reached a neighbor who needed it.

Extra Helpings in the Community

We Help, a Food Bank partner agency, works toward the same goal of alleviating hunger in its Long Beach community. Together, the Food Bank and its partner agencies, as We Help, have been making a positive impact in the lives of one million individuals each month. Through the Food Bank, We Help began picking up food from its local grocery store as part of the Extra Helpings Program, helping put essential food items on the tables of neighbors when they need it most.