06/23/2026
🚨A Hard Truth About “Free”
Let’s stop pretending this works.
Today, approximately 274 pounds of produce entered this store. About 80 pounds were taken for free. Only 5 people made purchases.
Total sales: $27.04 for the ENTIRE DAY!
Not $270.
Not $2,700.
Twenty-seven dollars.
That doesn’t cover transportation.
That doesn’t cover labor.
That doesn’t cover refrigeration.
That doesn’t cover air conditioning on a 80-degree day.
That doesn’t cover taxes, licenses, insurance, maintenance, supplies, or a single meaningful operating expense.
People tell us they love what we’re doing. They tell us how important this store is. They tell us we’re needed.
But love without support is just words.
A community resource cannot survive on compliments.
If people can afford ci******es, lottery tickets, alcohol, fast food, streaming subscriptions, and $7 coffees, but cannot contribute a few dollars to the place providing healthy food, then the issue isn’t poverty.
It’s people taking advantage of me.
We did not open this store to become an unlimited free food source funded by my own pockets.
What started as concern has become expectation.
What started as helping has become as “getting over”.
When people take, take, take, and rarely give back, that is not community. That is greed and selfishness.
The truth is harsh:
You cannot continuously remove water from a bucket and never refill it.
Eventually the bucket is empty.
And when the bucket is empty, everyone loses.
I refuse to bankrupt my modest social security benefits trying to save a community that is unwilling to participate in saving itself.
The math doesn’t care about feelings.
The bills still come.
The lights still need paid.
The workers still deserve wages.
The refrigerators still consume electricity.
And $27 doesn’t keep any of that running.
Enough is enough.
