How community fridges are fighting food insecurity.
“I think it's important that we’re responding and being able to create solution-based activism for our community, especially when social welfare reform is few and far between,” said Begum.
This outwardly focused mentality has been a trademark of Playground’s ethos since the coffee shop first opened. They’re a symbol of hope in Bed-Stuy, a historically Black neighborhood whose identity is being rapidly reconfigured by a wave of gentrifying residents, businesses, and developers. “Restaurants in general are very wasteful, but for the last four years we’ve been trying to encourage a different narrative," she says.
Begum had been toying with the idea of offering free produce for a while, but it wasn’t until a friend offered an extra fridge of theirs that the idea started to take form. From there, the Playground team and its volunteers scoured the web for other fridges, called for produce on Instagram, and sought out friends with cars to move their nascent project, literally. “The next thing we knew we had produce coming in that same day. People were helping us clean.
The Playground team takes care to keep the fridges clean and replenish its shelves with produce they buy using donations. Begum made sure to mention that they are working to keep the system as sanitized as possible, and handle all the produce with necessary precautions. “City regulations can often become a roadblock, but it’s something that we are working within to ensure the safety of patrons,” Begum told me.
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