The City of Brooklyn has a Secret Santa leaving out bags of free groceries.
Rob Slattery says that for the past four years, his community teamed up with Save-A-Lot Stores to provide free ingredients for holiday meals.
They often distributed the food at the community center at Brooklyn Acres, the community where Slattery lives, but found that often came with a stigma.
“There’s a lot of people that won’t come up here out of pride,” Slattery said, “And if you leave it somewhere they can just kind of scoot in there, sight unseen, and help themselves it’s a little less stressful on them.”
So, on Tuesday Slattery posted to facebook that groceries could be found at the Brooklyn sign at Biddulph Avenue and Tiedeman Road, as well as in Brooklyn Acres.
He said the food lasted just over an hour, as his post was shared thousands of times on social media.
“It took off. I couldn’t believe it. I had to finally turn off the ringer on my phone, it was just pinging too much,” he said.
But the gratitude kept pouring in.
“Saying ‘you don’t understand, I lost my job, I’ve been battling a health issue, and this is just bridging the gap for us and it really means a difference,’” Slattery said.
He said it was so successful, he plans to do another “drop” on Wednesday.
“Brooklyn City Hall there’s a big parking lot in front of their old fire station, so we’re going to park there as long as they allow us to and we’re going to give away as many bags as we can,” he said.
Through the generosity of Save-A-Lot, Slattery hopes to hand out as many 3,000 grocery bags this season.
“This is not about me, this is about just helping people,” he said.