We Love, Love, Love This Unusual Holiday Gift Idea!

When Stephanie Brady, a single mom, asked her eleven-year-old son one evening at dinner, “Do you know how many kids are really hungry?” she was surprised to learn that he didn’t. And that concerned her. Deeply.

“As a mom I felt I should bring that awareness to our dinner table. Many of us are privileged and we don’t realize how many are not,” she explains. “I wanted my son to understand that one out of six kids is hungry—and that we have to do better. We have to fight hunger through food rescue, access and distribution.”

She thought to herself, “What if I could create a reason for families to sit down together once a month to raise awareness while enjoying a delicious meal together?” A little less than a year later, Brady launched SoupBoxLove.

SoupBoxLove is an awareness-raising subscription service (buy once or regularly) that sends artisan soups—non-GMO, gluten-free, and vegan and vegetarian friendly—once per month. Proceeds benefit hunger-fighting nonprofits. Boxes include one batch of ready-to-prepare soup (8 servings) in seasonal flavors like Ginger Sweet Potato (December) and Black-Eyed Pea (January).

Boxes also include creative preparation and pairing ideas for the meal, and an overview of the selected charity or nonprofit of the month, from food banks to food rescue and redistribution nonprofits.

Brady says that she built the business so that every box purchased would have real impact. For example, every box shipped in October resulted in 16 pounds of fresh food for a family. “We choose to partner with nonprofits doing innovative work in the US—often that people don’t know about.” Each box also includes facts to help recipients educate and give back in their own communities.

In October, SoupBoxLove supported Boulder Food Rescue. Brady was drawn to their model because, not only does the all-volunteer organization redistribute food by bike, they have also created a “food rescue robot”—a computer program that twenty-two communities around the country now use. “Any community can use it—restaurants, grocery stores, etc.—to connect with bike volunteers.” To date, nearly 2 million pounds of food have been rescued through the Food Robot program.

In November, SoupBoxLove supported Partnership With Native Americans—a food and water program that provides unique multigenerational gardening and food education on reservations. “Elders teach youth heritage practices and get the kids involved in self-sustainable food, such as gardening on reservations,” she says. “There are horrible food access issues on reservations, so they now have a food truck to deliver ingredients, education and recipes.”

Brady is thrilled at how quickly SoupBoxLove has taken off since the October launch. “When you set in motion something you believe in—you’ve thought about it emotionally and rationally as a business person—and then people respond, it’s great!”

To learn more and to place an order, visit www.soupboxlove.com.