Amplified Impact: How Lineage Partnered with a Customer to Feed Thousands of Students in Canada

Few things excite the Lineage team more than using our industry expertise to help our customers in having a positive impact on the communities in which we live and work. We’re proud of our remarkable, imaginative team members and the strong, trusting relationships we have built with some of the world’s largest and most respected food companies.

Here’s how the Lineage team helped turn an opportunity into a reality by partnering with one of our customers, Nature’s Touch, to provide thousands of students in remote communities of Quebec with access to nutritious food in partnership with Breakfast Club of Canada.

Finding the Opportunities and Taking the Initiative to Help Customers Donate Food

Through the Lineage Foundation for Good’s Customer Product Donation program, which empowers customers to donate their food products directly from Lineage warehouses, we are uniquely positioned to help customers expand their charitable reach. With this program, Lineage facilitates the donation of products in a warehouse by transferring ownership of the product to the Lineage Foundation for Good, allowing us to continue storing the product at no cost to the customer. The Lineage team then helps with the logistics, coordinating transportation of the donation to charitable organizations and communities in need.

Following Lineage’s acquisition of Canadian cold storage leader, VersaCold, in 2022, our team took a proactive approach towards sharing the valuable opportunities provided by the Foundation’s product donation program. Rather than wait for an opportunity to come to us, our team quickly deployed to find out where newly-made Lineage customers might benefit from collaborative donation efforts that weren’t previously available to them.

When the Lineage Foundation for Good team connected with the legacy VersaCold team members, they quickly identified Nature’s Touch, an organization specializing in high-quality frozen fruits and vegetables, as a valued customer already committed to food donation and an ideal donation partner.

Hannah Hoskins, Executive Director, Lineage Foundation for Good reflects on the relationship, "When I was introduced to Nature’s Touch for the first time, we recognized very quickly that we had a shared vision when it came to expanding access to healthy fruits and vegetables within diverse communities where it can have a really meaningful impact."

After a few initial conversations, Hannah learned that Nature’s Touch was facing logistical challenges that were creating a bottleneck in their efforts to scale their charitable activities. She went to work, engaging with Lineage’s on-the-ground team in Canada, to create a game plan for how to leverage Lineage’s logistics expertise to support this worthy cause.

The Challenge Limiting the Customers’ Donation Program? Logistics.

Food waste reduction has been a sustainability priority for Nature’s Touch since its inception. By its nature, frozen foods play a crucial role in minimizing food waste by extending the shelf life of perishable items, allowing consumers to consume food at their convenience and reduce the likelihood of spoilage. Nature’s Touch has been partnering with community organizations for over twenty years to donate surplus food from their operations.

As their business grew, so did their ability to grow the impact of their community investment initiatives. They started looking for ways to grow their impact, with the aims of addressing needs of school-aged children. They had an existing relationship with Breakfast Club of Canada, a charitable organization in Canada that focuses on classroom hunger, but faced logistics challenges with getting their products to students in remote communities. To donate frozen fruits and vegetables, temperature-controlled storage and efficient transportation services are essential to maintaining food quality.

Niki Yannakis, co-founder of Nature’s Touch, says, "Frozen fruit has to be maintained at precise temperatures. You don't want product thawing out in transit, compromising the quality and safety, before ever reaching its destination. We needed a logistics partner to help us ensure our product reaches these schools while maintaining that quality and allowing us to expand our reach."

Lineage’s Passion for Food Donation, Extensive Facility Network and Logistics Expertise Provides an Answer

Lineage’s extensive cold storage network in Canada created a strategic foothold in the region to help ensure the donated products remained fresh and safe while preparing for distribution. When Nature’s Touch sent their products with the specific goal of donation, the Lineage warehouse teams streamlined the process by carefully packing the frozen fruit and preparing it for its new destination and purpose, all while maintaining optimum temperatures.

Next, with the help of Lineage’s proactive logistics teams, we coordinated the delivery of these products. Securing transport with temperature-controlled trucks, Lineage’s partnership with Nature’s Touch resulted in donations of over 6,000 lbs. of nutritious frozen strawberries directly to schools in remote areas of Quebec. Lineage handled most of the last-mile deliveries, with Breakfast Club of Canada stepping in to assist with the last-mile delivery by plane to all schools supported in Nunavik. The temperature-controlled storage and transportation helped ensure these products went to schools to support the nutrition needs of students throughout the school year.

Establishing a plan, backed up by the Lineage team’s cold chain expertise—a solid temperature-controlled warehouse and transportation network—enabled Nature’s Touch’s to expand their donation efforts to support communities they were not able to reach before.

Real Results, Real Impact for Kids

The beneficial partnership quickly delivered measurable benefits for students in remote communities in Quebec. Over 6,000 students across numerous elementary schools, high schools and daycares now consistently receive nutritious frozen fruit from Nature’s Touch, providing a solid foundation for learning with food that can be hard to come by.

Claudine Dessureault, Senior Purchasing & Inventory Advisor for Breakfast Club of Canada, says, "Strawberries were always challenging to handle for long-distance transport. For many of the schools, it's the first time in a long time that they’ve received strawberries, and the kids are loving it. The schools are getting creative with it too. It’s giving them plenty of options to enhance their menus with things like healthy smoothies, helping these kids get a great start to their day."

School administrators have started reporting to Breakfast Club that they’re noticing increases in student enthusiasm during meals, helping illustrate just how impactful donations like these can be.

The Power of Specialized Logistics–Greater Impact and Greater Reach

The success and scale of these donations were amplified by both the unique capacity of the Lineage Foundation for Good to financially take title of the donated product and the comprehensive logistics network and temperature-controlled transportation services provided by Lineage. Having a partner with the ability to maintain strict temperatures through cold storage and transportation helps safely deliver food to these remote communities. The proactivity of warehouse and logistics teams allowed us to identify and address inventory complexities, packing processes and distribution routing, completing our customer’s donations smoothly.

Through our support and partnership, Nature’s Touch was able to overcome logistics barriers, setting them up to make their community giving even more impactful.

Encouraged by the success, and with the necessary logistics framework now in place, Nature’s Touch is positioned to do even more in the future. Lineage’s strategic network of cold storage warehouses and temperature-controlled transportation solutions are setting Nature’s Touch up for success. Backed by the solution-focused team at Lineage, they’re now looking to expand the current donation program to even more hard-to-reach regions in Canada.

Lineage’s Team Took the Initiative to Help Our Customer Achieve their Goals and Expand their Impact

This successful collaboration serves as a proof point to the impact of a culture powered by proactivity. Lineage team members didn’t just participate; they initiated. We empower our team members to actively identify opportunities and create solutions for our customers, building strong relationships along the way. These solutions helped Nature’s Touch overcome challenges, allowing them to strengthen the foundation of their existing charitable program and setting the stage for further growth. The result – a greater impact, a scalable future and fresh fruit for more kids.

From Hannah’s initial outreach to the strategic efforts of our logistics teams and active commitment of our warehouse teams, every step exemplifies how an ownership mindset helps drive meaningful results for Lineage customers.