The Food Brigade Inc. is a New Jersey nonprofit corporation. Our mission is to provide food, in the form of both prepared meals and fresh and packaged foods, to local families and individuals dealing with hunger and food insecurity. We perform our mission through the use of volunteers who assist with food acquisition, transport, preparation, distribution, and delivery.
In furtherance of our mission, we distribute meals and bags of groceries from our pantry location. An example of a typical operation: families in need place online food orders in our virtual "choice pantry" storefront, which they then pick up at their scheduled appointment times. Simultaneously, food is loaded into the vehicles of our volunteer drivers, who then deliver the food directly to those who lack the ability to travel to our distribution site.
Origins of The Food Brigade
The roots of The Food Brigade trace back almost 30 years. Co-Founder Carmine DeMarco first became active as a volunteer in feeding and housing the homeless in the early 1990s. A few years later, Karen Benevento DeMarco joined him, and the pair became periodic coordinators at a shelter for homeless families in Englewood, New Jersey. After the shelter closed, they continued volunteering for that organization by periodically preparing and serving meals at the Bergen County Shelter in Hackensack, and serving as overnight hosts at satellite shelters.
During a family health crisis in 2017, the DeMarcos were fortunate to have a caring friend who organized a "meal train", whereby their neighbors banded together to provide nightly meals for the family to lessen the strain upon them. Afterward, and wanting to "pay it forward", the DeMarcos took their friend's idea and formed the Dumont Meal Brigade, coordinating volunteers to provide home-cooked meals to local families who were going through loss of employment, catastrophic illness or injury, or other personal struggles.
In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding lock-down, Karen DeMarco individually began cooking meals for community members in need and senior citizens on a fixed income. The DeMarcos also recruited and coordinated volunteers to provide dinner to the homeless through the Walk-In Dinner Program in Hackensack multiple times. Wishing to expand the scope of their service to the hungry and food insecure, the DeMarcos formed The Food Brigade Inc. as a public charity. The scale of the group's food-relief efforts expanded dramatically with the assistance of Trustee Ifraz Ilyas, who first introduced the DeMarcos to large-scale bulk distribution of produce and dairy, and the church council and congregation of Calvary United Methodist Church in Dumont, who provided a staging area for The Food Brigade's operations.
* NOTICE RE. DEDUCTIBILITY OF YOUR DONATION: The Food Brigade Inc. is a nonprofit corporation of the State of New Jersey and a registered tax-exempt charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. All donors seeking a tax deduction will receive a timely acknowledgment letter from The Food Brigade Inc.
Donate via Zelle:
Please send your donation to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like us to mail you a donor acknowledgment receipt.
Donate via PayPal:
CLICK HERE to donate via PayPal - YOU DO NOT NEED A PAYPAL ACCOUNT, simply click to "Donate with a Debit or Credit Card". Please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like us to mail you a donor acknowledgment receipt.
Donate via Venmo @FoodBrigade:
You can donate using the Venmo smartphone app by sending to @FoodBrigade. If you don't have the app installed, you can also donate using your phone's web browser (such as mobile Google Chrome or mobile Apple Safari) at https://venmo.com/FoodBrigade. Please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like us to mail you a donor acknowledgment receipt.
Donate by Check:
Please make your check payable to "The Food Brigade Inc." and mail your donation to:
The Food Brigade Inc.
c/o Carmine DeMarco, Executive Director
P.O. Box 214
Paramus, NJ 07653