May 15, 2020

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Hi, I’m Meghan Mullally- Gorr, and this is “Sullivan 180 Presents… Take Five!” We are continuing our interviews with community leaders to discuss their organization’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our guests today are Dayna and Dania. Thank you both for joining me, please take a minute to introduce yourselves and each of your organizations.

Dania LaScola:
Hi, I’m Dania LaScola, I’m co owner and founder of The Callicoon Pantry with my business partner, Patrice Tanner, and we a natural pantry that tries to make food accessible and less harmful for the planet.

Dayna Halprin:
And I’m Dayna Halprin. I’m a chef at Early Bird Cookery in Callicoon, and we are a farm to table meal delivery and catering company.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Great. Okay. So I know your daily operations have completely changed and your two separate organizations have joined forces. So can you tell us a little bit about what’s been going on in Callicoon?

Dayna Halprin:
Yeah, absolutely. So our business, we are an essential grocery store, but we had major supply chain disruption with all of this, so we tried to funnel our efforts into a free community pantry that we started putting outside of our building. Just no-questions-asked, “take away”. The donations were coming in so heavily and wonderfully from the community that we wanted another outlet and Patrice had a brilliant idea of seeing if we could partner with Early Bird Cookery to bring some meals to the local frontline workers at Grover M. Hermann hospital in Callicoon. And our catering company, because we’re a food producer, we’re also considered an essential business. So we’re able to keep working during this time, which we feel very fortunate to do. So we are still continuing our meal delivery services throughout Sullivan County, but we’ve pretty much lost all of our events and weddings for the upcoming season, which is kind of our livelihood. So we’ve had to kind of figure out how to adapt and keep the uptick of meal delivery orders going and make sure that we can still get all of our ingredients in stock. And because we did kind of cut back on our hours that we are working, we were able to add the Wednesday Cook Day. That’s a complete, that’s a donation day that we do now. So the pantry, through the donations that they’ve been fielding, we’re able to order ingredients for that ‘cook day’. And so we cook all day on Wednesday and then distribute to the hospital in Callicoon, then also to ENGN and SALT through Marty Colavito and Tom Bosket were able to donate prepared meals as well as bulk produce in grains that we’re able to order for cost through some of our distributors to them that they are then able to pass them on to Sullivan County residents.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
So how should people keep up on the news of how to get in touch with you, or to find out about pantry items and what’s going on…what’s the best way to stay in touch?

Dania LaScola:
I think for us, definitely our Instagram. We post most updates we have there. You can also email us any questions if you want to be part of it. If you’d like to donate, we do have a donate link in our Bio, and also Early Bird’s bio. If you go to www.thecallicoonpantry.com, there’s a donation button. We’re just trying to get people to donate through that link. And that’s us three part, a donation, a hundred percent of those donations are going back to the community. We’re not getting paid. Those. It is a hundred percent like Dana said. And number one, we donate to fuel the free community pantry that we have outside the building or indoors, whether permitting on Fridays and Sundays from 10 to five. Two is, buying items for Early Bird Cook. And then third, is donating the items to Marty and Tom with the free community pantry that we have outside. It’s just a table set up where you can kind of take what you need or leave what you don’t. And that’s very, hands-free: no one is there monitoring it. So if you’d like to drop some canned goods off that you have that are extra, you can just put them outside on the days that we’re open: Fridays and Sundays. So if you’d like to help in another way, you can absolutely reach out. We’re trying to figure out, if we do have more delivery routes going on, we might need transportation, or people willing to drop off and stuff. So, if you’d like to donate in another way, just reach out to us and we’ll see what we can do.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Okay. That’s great. So is there anything else that you guys would like to share? Anything that’s been most difficult or maybe some of the best things that have come out of this?

Dayna Halprin:
I think for me, some of the best things that have come out of this: I’m a Sullivan County native, and I’ve always had a lot of pride of being a part of this community in Sullivan County and showing the ways that we are strong and we’re diverse. So it’s just been really nice to see our neighbors and community has stepped up for one, another 100%.

Dania LaScola:
I agree. And we’ve really seen people step up and come forward and donate, which is incredible because it’s allowed us to continue this program weekly for at least the next five or six weeks. And we’re going to have more donations in every day. So it’s incredibly wonderful to see that. With those donations, we’ve been able to feed the hospital staff at Callicoon,four days a week, every week, we’ve been able to give 75 meals to people who might not otherwise have meals through ENGN and SALT. There have been many people that have come by the free pantry and are really, really grateful as well.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
I have to say, thank you guys so much. I am a resident of Western Sullivan County, love the County as a whole. And so proud that you guys have made this, your home over here. We’re thrilled to have you in our are really proud of the work that you’re doing.