In rural Northeast Florida, the challenge isn’t only the rising cost of groceries for struggling families but also getting food to people quickly enough as demand grows.<\/p>\n
To ease that problem, Publix is donating $1.1 million to Feeding Northeast Florida, according to Jacksonville Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here’s what to know<\/p>\n On Sept. 23, Publix announced that it will give $1.1 million to Feeding Northeast Florida as part of a $25 million anti-hunger commitment across eight Southern states.<\/p>\n Feeding Northeast Florida says the funding will help move food faster into rural communities within its 12-county service area, which stretches from the Gulf Coast to the First Coast.<\/p>\n The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics said August food-at-home prices were 2.2% above where they were a year earlier, as Jax Today reported.<\/p>\n Susan King, CEO of Feeding Northeast Florida, warned that demand has risen as well, with food lines up 20% from the first quarter of the year to the second.<\/p>\n “They do great work here. And they have a history of doing great work,” Publix CEO Kevin Murphy said, per Jax Today.<\/p>\n More background<\/p>\n About 7 million of the 38.1 million pounds of food Feeding Northeast Florida distributed in 2025 came from Publix’s Good Together program.<\/p>\n Through that effort, employees at Publix’s 1,442 stores each evening set aside edible items if the packaging fell short of appearance standards.<\/p>\n The food goes to local food banks rather than being discarded.<\/p>\n Publix said the program, now 17 years old, hit a one-year high in 2025 with 140 million pounds donated, according to Jax Today.<\/p>\n Such efforts give shoppers a way to identify companies putting surplus food to practical use; supporting eco-friendly initiatives by mainstream brands<\/a> is a great way to direct the dollars you spend on everyday purchases toward important causes.<\/p>\n What’s being done?<\/p>\n Publix paired the donation with volunteer work in the field.<\/p>\n At a Hunger Action Month event at Feeding Northeast Florida’s Jacksonville headquarters, Publix employees sorted 13,900 pounds of food \u2014 enough to provide 11,583 meals, Jax Today reported.<\/p>\n The Florida Blue Foundation pledged $400,000 over four years to Clay County-based Waste Not Want Not as part of a $3.1 million effort to bolster food emergency networks and aid under-resourced people.<\/p>\n “People are feeling the squeeze, whether it’s fuel prices or whether it’s the cost of energy or other things,” Murphy told Jax Today. “… Those longer events create a bigger demand. Publix is happy to continue to do our part to support the Feeding America partners throughout our network.”<\/p>\n Feeding Northeast Florida board Chairman Dipak Rajhansa said<\/a>: “It’s not just going to bed hungry. But it’s crime, it’s poverty, it’s nutrition, it’s education. We can solve a lot of problems if we are able to solve the problem of hunger in our community.”<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In rural Northeast Florida, the challenge isn’t only the rising cost of groceries for struggling families but also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-418261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}