Publix Gives $1.1M to Feeding Northeast Florida to Speed Food Delivery in Rural Counties
Publix is donating $1.1 million to Feeding Northeast Florida, a pledge the food bank says will help move groceries more quickly into rural counties as rising costs and growing need strain its network.
The grocery chain announced the gift Sept. 23. It is part of a broader $25 million anti-hunger commitment Publix has made across eight Southern states, according to Jacksonville Today.
Feeding Northeast Florida serves a 12-county area stretching from the Gulf Coast to the First Coast. In rural parts of that region, the problem is not just affordability; it is logistics. Food must travel farther, often with fewer resources, to reach families who need it.
Those pressures are intensifying. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that August food-at-home prices were 2.2% higher than a year earlier. Susan King, CEO of Feeding Northeast Florida, said demand has climbed alongside those costs, with food lines up 20% from the first quarter of the year to the second.
“They do great work here. And they have a history of doing great work,” Publix CEO Kevin Murphy said, according to Jacksonville Today.
The donation builds on Publix’s Good Together program, a food-recovery effort that directs unsalable but still edible items to local food banks instead of landfills. Each evening, employees at Publix’s 1,442 stores set aside items whose packaging falls short of appearance standards. About 7 million of the 38.1 million pounds of food Feeding Northeast Florida distributed in 2025 came from that program, the organization said.
Publix said Good Together, now 17 years old, reached a one-year high in 2025 with 140 million pounds donated, Jacksonville Today reported. The scale of the effort matters beyond hunger relief: It keeps usable food out of the waste stream and gives shoppers a clearer way to support companies that are putting surplus food to practical use. Backing eco-friendly initiatives by mainstream brands can help direct everyday spending toward causes with measurable local impact.
The company paired its financial donation with hands-on volunteer work. At a Hunger Action Month event at Feeding Northeast Florida’s Jacksonville headquarters, Publix employees sorted 13,900 pounds of food — enough to provide 11,583 meals, according to Jacksonville Today.
Other funders are stepping up as well. 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 strengthen emergency food networks and assist under-resourced communities.
Murphy said economic strain is driving more families to seek help. “People are feeling the squeeze, whether it’s fuel prices or whether it’s the cost of energy or other things,” he told Jacksonville 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.”
Feeding Northeast Florida board Chairman Dipak Rajhansa said hunger is intertwined with broader community challenges. “It’s not just going to bed hungry. But it’s crime, it’s poverty, it’s nutrition, it’s education,” he said. “We can solve a lot of problems if we are able to solve the problem of hunger in our community.”
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