At Feeding Westchester’s Hunger Heroes Breakfast, the message was clear from the start: this work only happens because people across the food system choose partnership over separation, action over waste, and community over convenience. 

The morning was designed to celebrate Feeding Westchester’s retail and wholesale partners, but it also told a larger story about what Retail Recovery makes possible across Westchester.  

From store teams and drivers to pantry leaders and volunteers, each person in the room represented a different part of the same effort: making sure good food reaches neighbors instead of landfills. 

Feeding Westchester President and CEO Kristine Borok opened the event with gratitude, welcoming partners as the organization’s “Hunger Heroes” and recognizing the role they play in connecting abundance to need. She reminded the room that these partnerships are about far more than operations. They are about the children, seniors, and families across Westchester who are counting on that food to make it to their tables.  

That spirit of shared purpose carried into remarks from Dan Wolk of Stop & Shop, who acknowledged that while many companies in the room may compete in business, that competition falls away when the goal is nourishing the community.  

In that work, he said, everyone can come together as one team — and that is what matters most. His words helped frame the morning not as a gathering of separate organizations, but as a network of partners united around something bigger than any one brand. 

The human impact of that partnership came into even sharper focus through Sade Ritter of the Mount Vernon Senior Nutrition Center. She shared that when their distribution effort began, it was intended just for seniors.  

But after conversations with the Mayor of Mount Vernon about how to expand access, the program opened to the broader community. On that very first day, so many families came for food that she was left speechless. She had not realized just how many people needed help.  

Today, she said, the program distributes about 4,200 pounds of food each week in Mount Vernon — a powerful reflection of both the scale of need and the strength of the partnership behind it. 

Together, those perspectives captured the heart of Retail Recovery: food that might otherwise be discarded is instead becoming relief for families, support for seniors, and a dependable source of nourishment in communities facing growing pressure. 

Ryan Brisk, Feeding Westchester’s VP of Operations and Procurement, spoke to the opportunity ahead in direct terms: “The food is out there. It just needs to move faster and farther.” His remarks grounded the morning in both urgency and possibility. The challenge, he made clear, is not whether food exists. It is whether all of us can work together to recover more of it, more consistently, and get it to the people who need it most. 

Jenine Kelly, VP of Development & Marketing, built on that point by speaking to the role of financial support in sustaining and expanding the work. As need continues to rise, she noted, deeper investment is essential to keep trucks moving, food flowing, and operations running strong.  

She pointed to what could happen if every partner in the room increased support by just 10%: together, they could help provide half a million more meals across Westchester County. Her message was rooted not only in numbers, but in shared responsibility — when the community is cared for, everyone is stronger.  

The morning closed with Danielle Vasquez, Feeding Westchester’s Retail Recovery Manager, who brought the celebration back to the people making it happen every day.  

She thanked partners for showing up with such commitment to nourishing the community and reminded the room that the honorees being recognized were proof of what is possible when partners fully commit. That spirit came to life through the awards themselves, which celebrated leadership, consistency, and care in action.  

Taken together, the stories and remarks from the Hunger Heroes Breakfast revealed something powerful: Retail Recovery is not just a program. It is a community effort built on trust, coordination, and a shared belief that good food should do good in the world. 

Sometimes that looks like a store donation picked up at just the right time. Sometimes it looks like thousands of pounds of food reaching families in Mount Vernon each week.  

And sometimes it looks like a room full of partners being reminded that while they may come from different places, they are part of the same story — one that is helping nourish Westchester, one meal at a time.