Friendly Fridge Bronx

Founded in 2020, the Bronx Friendly Fridge is a street fridge that is maintained by neighborhood volunteers. The fridge, located conveniently near a busy metro stop, is available 24-7 and offers fresh produce, sandwiches, pantry items, and prepared meals from local delis, restaurants, and schools.

Sara Allen and Selma Raven discovered the idea on Instagram: a community fridge, a place to leave and take leftover and excess food.  Allen stumbled upon the post on the seventh anniversary of the death of Raven’s son, Michael Raven, an ardent food activist.  

Three hours later, they bought a fridge on Craigslist. Three days later The Friendly Fridge Bronx was up and running outside the Last Stop bar and grill, right down the steps from the last stop of the 1 train (5977 Broadway). Ever since then, the Fridge has been in continuous operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, powered by an extension cord that stretches inside The Last Stop, and behind the bar.

“The very first day we said we were doing it, our neighbor thought we were crazy. Then, she came downstairs with a $100 bill. We bought food right away,” Raven said. “We packed it with great fruits and vegetables. It was the beginning: May 21.” At first, the couple used $10 and $20 donations from friends to stock the fridge with produce, sandwiches, and produce from neighborhood vendors. They began posting to Instagram, and neighbors started taking note, with some making regular trips to grab food to eat, and others dropping off a few pounds at a time of garlic scapes and eggplants from their CSA, and a number reaching out to volunteers. Within a year, the fridge had grown from a two-person operation on Broadway into a loose constellation of volunteers and donors, processing thousands of pounds of groceries and meals that fed hundreds of people every week.

"The refrigerators that are sticking around are the ones that have a very solid community base around it," explains Allen. "Another thing that we're working very hard and we are succeeding in changing the narrative around lowering food waste as opposed to charity. We're trying to normalize the idea of, 'Don't waste food. If you have extra food, you bring it to the fridge. Someone else can use it.' There's a very slight but important difference there because it becomes accessible to everyone, not just to haves and have-nots.”

“People ask us if we are the owners of the fridge. And we are like, ‘No, we just maintain and clean the fridge.’ We plugged it in. But really it's a community fridge, it belongs to everyone in the community,” Raven said.

Source: Aissata Barry, Q&A With Sara Allen and Selma Raven, Co-founders of the Friendly Fridge on 242nd & Broadway, Medium, July 2, 2020