40% of people who qualify for food pantries don't go. This nonprofit is changing that.

This week’s Joy Beat is all about good food, big hearts and the power of community. Let’s grab a seat at the Daily Table, an initiative transforming lives and combating food insecurity. Here’s how one Joy Beat listener described the Daily Table in their nomination:

“Their mission is to provide fresh, tasty, convenient and nutritious food to communities in need at prices all shoppers can afford. Seventy percent of their workers are trained, live and work within two miles of their stores. It’s just a great organization, but it is a nonprofit, so they need community support.”

Serving over 12,000 customers each week, they’ve rescued 400,000 pounds of food annually. About a quarter of all transactions are made using SNAP.

Sasha Purpura, CEO of the Daily Table, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share more about this week’s Joy Beat celebrant. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: It’s great to be talking about this. The Daily Table has four locations now in the Greater Boston area. But for people who might not be familiar, tell us about its mission and, well, the journey from its founding.

Sasha Purpura: Absolutely. So, Daily Table was founded by the past president of Trader Joe’s North American, Doug Rauch, who was actually driving down Route 93 and saw one of the Greater Boston Food Bank signs saying: One in three people in Massachusetts struggle with food insecurity.

He was floored by that number, and that number is still there. It doesn’t make sense because we have so much food in this country, and the fact that people cannot afford to eat healthy food makes absolutely no sense. Doug set out to solve that problem.

Now, historically, the way we’ve addressed food insecurity is through food pantries, and they’re critical to ensuring people have enough to eat. But, unfortunately, they’re set up such that [for] people going to a food pantry, it says: If you’re low income, here’s where you can come get your food.

Because of that, we’re told 40% of people who qualify for food pantries won’t go. It’s a stigma — they don’t want to go somewhere and say, “I’m low-income, so here’s how I get food.” The Daily Table normalizes shopping. It democratizes shopping.

The idea was to set up a supermarket; that’s how people get food today. That 40% of people I’m talking about [are also] shopping for their food, but the sad reality is they can’t afford healthy food. If you have a low income, I mean, you have to buy high-calorie, low-nutrition foods if you want to feed your family.

The idea of Daily Table is: let’s set up a dignified shopping experience where everybody can come and everybody can afford healthy food. Daily Table is absolutely set up for people who use SNAP to buy food that have lower incomes, but it’s also for you and for anybody. It is a place where everybody can come and have a dignified shopping experience and load up on fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables and proteins.

Everything you buy at Daily Table meets certain nutrition standards in terms of low sodium, low sugar: it’s healthy. It makes the community strong.

Rath: Tell us more about this community — the ones who have not been served in the same way by traditional food banks — and the response you’ve had from the communities you serve.

Purpura: The response has been incredible. We first opened our stores in 2015. It’ll actually be our 10-year anniversary this year in Codman Square in Dorchester. When Doug came into that community, he met with community leaders, he met with community members, and he talked about what his vision was, and he listened to the community.

One of the first things we heard from a lot of folks was, “This is important. We want access to healthy food, but I can’t cook. I don’t have time to cook; I’m working two jobs. I have to go to fast food to feed my family.”

In response to that, in our Dorchester store, we created a commissary kitchen. We have a big kitchen in the back, and we prepare in-house fresh, healthy, prepared meals that go to all of our stores. We have smoothies, we have chicken dinners, we have fresh salads. Our salads start at $2.99. You can get a chicken with vegetables and rice for $2.99.

It’s healthy, prepared food for families that can’t make the time, don’t have access to resources to cook but still want to choose and afford healthy food. We heard that from the community, and we implemented it.

Our other stores are in Cambridge in Central Square, in Roxbury in Nubian Square, and our most recent store is in Salem. In each of those communities, we tried to make sure we’re listening to those communities and carrying the fruits and vegetables that are appropriate to the cultures that we’re serving.

Our customers are a part of this. It’s a community grocery store. They’re part of deciding how we continue to grow, how we continue to improve the offerings and ensure that we’re really meeting the needs of the community.

Rath: This is obviously a massive, intense operation — you’re running full supermarkets down to prepared foods, the way you described. But you’re doing this as a nonprofit and with lots of collaboration. Tell us about how you pulled that off, and the people that make this happen.

Purpura: Absolutely — and that’s part of honestly why this is such a joy. It is a community effort from our staff to our donors to our volunteers.

We’re able to do this for a few reasons. One is that we find partnerships with like-minded organizations that help us offer food at a low price. An excellent example is Little Leaf Lettuce — they’re out of Devens, Massachusetts — and they’re a very large hydroponic grower of lettuce.

Little Leaf Lettuce is incredibly popular and is in every store, from Market Basket to Whole Foods. But Little Leaf Lettuce believes in what we’re trying to do. They give us a special price on their lettuce, so we’re able to offer a standard size, four-ounce box for $2.99 and an eight-ounce box for $3.99. That is, by far, the lowest price in town.

We have partnerships with Teddie’s Peanut Butter , which is local, and with Jessica’s Bread . We find a lot of partnerships with local vendors and producers who believe in our mission and are willing to help us offer lower prices by giving us a lower cost.

In addition to finding these like-minded partners, we rely on the community to help support the store. I’ve worked in nonprofits for over a decade now, and all nonprofits rely on philanthropy, and so does Daily Table. But one of the very unique and incredible things about Daily Table is that 70% of our income comes from shoppers, so we’re only needing to raise 30% of our operating budget.

What that means is every time anybody comes in to the Daily Table to shop and get a good deal, they’re actually supporting the mission and ensuring that the next person can come into Daily Table and get a good deal. So our shoppers are a key, key, key component and partner in making sure Daily Table can continue.

And then, we have our financial donors. Everything from individuals who come into the store — some who shop there, others who just care about food insecurity. Lots of corporations have foundations and support us. We work with the cities of Boston and Cambridge, who help support an incredible program that we have called Double Up Food Bucks. That offers SNAP shoppers half-off of fresh produce that’s already low-cost.

So it really is a community effort of people coming together and ensuring that Daily Table can exist to offer low-cost, healthy foods.

Rath: You kind of answered a question I was going to ask — I was thinking that, you know, maybe I shouldn’t shop at the Daily Table because I can afford to pay more for groceries, and I should leave it for other people. But it’s OK [for me to shop there]?

Purpura: It is! When we first opened, that was a big challenge. People thought they shouldn’t shop there. We continually try to get the message out that if you shop at Daily Table, you’re donating and you’re getting a good deal on groceries.

If you’d like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at (617) 300-BEAT [2328].