Food that is still safe to eat can be left behind when a store has more than it can sell. Community groups can recover some of it, but getting food from a donor to a family takes planning, safe storage and transportation. A new Thousand Oaks facility is meant to make those steps easier to coordinate.
The City of Thousand Oaks and Adelante Comunidad Conejo celebrated the opening of the Community Food Recovery Hub on Oct. 16 at the Park Oaks campus. The former Conejo Valley Unified School District central kitchen is now a base for collecting, storing and distributing recovered food. The city says Adelante operates the hub with support from a CalRecycle grant; its opening release describes stronger coordination among local food-recovery partners as a goal.
A co-director told KCLU that the facility’s walk-in cooler gives the organization more room to hold produce safely. The co-director said connecting recovered food with families depends on trust. “It’s built on trust,” the co-director told the station. The hub is designed to connect food collection with distribution, so donations can be handled safely before they reach community programs.
Adelante’s food-distribution work began in March 2020, when school campuses closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the organization’s project timeline. The nonprofit had been using space at a Thousand Oaks church, but in June 2025 it learned that the church needed to reduce the space available to its program. The change prompted a search for a more stable place to store food and equipment.
The organization says it moved those supplies among seven temporary locations in Thousand Oaks in July 2025. A search for a permanent base began in earnest the following month, according to Adelante. The former school district kitchen at Park Oaks offered space for the next stage. Conejo Valley Unified trustees approved Adelante’s use of the facility in November 2025, and the nonprofit says it received the keys the following month.
The grant process developed alongside the search for space. The city solicited proposals for a local food-recovery hub in December 2025. Adelante applied in January 2026, and the City Council voted on March 10 to award it a $325,000 CalRecycle grant, according to the nonprofit. Adelante says the grant is restricted to expanding food-recovery and distribution capacity, including food-safe cold storage and shared-use vehicles. It cannot be used to purchase food or cover expenses unrelated to recovered-food distribution.
The network is part of the plan. Adelante says food pantries and other nonprofit distribution groups may use the facility, equipment and supplies, including groups outside current Food Share-sponsored opportunities. The FAQ also lists smaller food producers as potential participants, but does not identify which groups have joined.
The equipment is intended to help more than one organization. Adelante says it has purchased two vehicles and two refrigerated trailers for the project. The city’s opening release specifically identifies an electric van funded through the grant; it says the vehicle will collect donations and deliver food to community distribution sites. The city says the van is expected to lower fuel costs and transportation emissions.
Adelante’s hub FAQ defines the path: edible food that might otherwise enter the waste stream is collected by nonprofits and redistributed through food pantries, meal programs and community groups to households. The FAQ describes the planned model as coordinating pickups from grocery stores, restaurants, markets, schools and farms; adding storage for temperature-sensitive food; and creating more ways for nonprofits and community groups to distribute what is recovered. It says food distributors identified barriers to accepting more rescued food in discussions leading to the hub. These are planned functions, not confirmed partners or measured results from the new facility.
The opening reports do not yet give a post-opening tally of food collected or households reached by the new hub. Adelante describes the facility as a way to expand local capacity, while the city says it is intended to strengthen partner coordination. The scale of those changes has not yet been reported.
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