What's at stake:
As CalFresh cuts put additional pressure on household food budgets, many Fresno County residents are struggling to access fresh food. Many food distributors have been stepping up to help fill the gap.
Fresno County sits at the center of one of the nation’s top agricultural regions, but for the founder of Fresno’s My Homies Kitchen, that abundance doesn’t always make its way to the local tables that need it most.
“We are an industry that brings in billions of dollars in every surrounding county around us, yet, millions of dollars of food goes to waste every year,” said Chef Xef Zubia. “Fresno being the breadbasket of the world, it doesn’t make any sense that people are food insecure here.”
As part of President Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ signed into law in July 2025, large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as CalFresh in California, have made it much harder for many families to eat.
The California Budget and Policy Center estimates that cuts to CalFresh could cost the state between $2.3 billion and $5.1 billion annually, put roughly one million Californians at risk of losing food assistance entirely, and reduce benefits for the roughly three million households who rely on the program.
More than 237,000 people in Fresno County received CalFresh benefits as of July, according to the state’s CalFresh dashboard.
With SNAP cuts taking effect, Fresno communities are finding new ways to put food on the table, from grassroots food distributions to meals organized by gurdwaras.
Bringing food to Fresno without shame
My Homies Kitchen, Zubia said, tries to provide food that does not make people feel ashamed for needing it.
“They call it food deserts, it’s really a food apartheid because systemically they created this problem,” Zubia said. “There is actual redlining that’s happened in Fresno.”
That history is part of why Zubia sees food distribution not simply as charity, but as a responsibility to the community.
“We offer this food, but with more kindness,” Zubia said. “We’re not out there trying to [get] exposure for just doing the bare minimum. More people should be doing this. They should be doing more.”
At My Homies Kitchen, food distribution takes place every Saturday. The organization receives a shipment of food on Wednesdays from the Central California Food Bank, when volunteers stock its shelves and refrigerators. By Saturday morning, people begin lining up around 7 a.m., with distribution starting around 10 a.m.
When the group gets more food than it can distribute on Saturday, Zubia said it may hold an additional distribution during the week. The organization also receives food from local farmers, including Rancho de Rodney, a locally-based nonprofit farm.
My Homies Kitchen also delivers food to elderly residents in the area, particularly because of the heat and the difficulty of carrying groceries home.
The demand for the distributions has grown, particularly following cuts to CalFresh benefits, Zubia said. The organization has been distributing food for years, beginning with distributions near Fresno’s Roosevelt neighborhood before moving to the west side.
“But the need is there,” Zubia said. “There’s so much people that are in need.”
Sometimes, however, the food available does not necessarily match what Zubia would prefer to distribute. Food from the food bank can include sugary or processed items, he said.
“And as much as I don’t like giving it out, it brings the people a little bit of joy,” Zubia said.
For Zubia, that reality underscores the contradiction at the center of Fresno’s food system.
Zubia has been involved in food distribution for nearly six years. They began the work during the pandemic with Fresno Barrios Unidos before eventually becoming its director and later branching off to establish My Homies Kitchen.
The organization has since become part of what Zubia describes as a broader ecosystem of people who come together around food.
“When you look at our place, it’s alive,” Zubia said. “We have an actual ecosystem of people that enjoy going there because we offer them food without shame.”
Zubia said addressing food insecurity requires more than expanding individual food distributions, however. They see the problem as connected to larger systems involving agriculture, race, economics and political power in Fresno.
“Ag is bigger than tax. Let’s face facts,” Zubia said. “This is California. We grow so much produce, and it is the biggest industry. That’s what makes California’s economy so lucrative.”
Prableen Kaur, executive director of the Khalsa Foundation, helps provide food distribution at gurdwaras, specifically Guru Nanak Parkash Gurdwara and the Sikh Institute, with volunteers from the Khalsa Foundation.
In the morning, Kaur said, food is served after religious services and can remain available throughout the day. A new meal is prepared in the evening. The meals are vegetarian, and dishes include chapati and aloo gobi as typical offerings.
“You don’t have to be following the religion,” Kaur said. “You don’t have to be of the color, you don’t have to be the race. If you’re having financial struggles, you know that you can go get a free meal in the evening and could take your kids there during the day.”
Kaur said the need for that kind of assistance has become particularly important as Punjabi families face financial pressures, including problems in the trucking industry and the broader job market. SNAP cuts have also impacted many families who come in for food.
“Everybody’s having it, so it takes away that anxiety or that taboo of being scared that someone’s going to find out that I am actually in financial crisis,” Kaur said.
But Kaur also described changes in how some gurdwaras operate. As a child, Kaur remembers gurdwaras being open at all hours. Now, some, including the Sikh Institute, close their gates at night due to theft and other security concerns.
As food insecurity grows, Kaur said simply knowing where to go and that they can enter without having to explain their circumstances, can be the first step.
“You’ll find a lot of people really like the message of free food and removing the barriers of someone not having access to food,” Kaur said. “That was from Guru Nanak, our first founder, that everybody deserves to have food.”
It started with one orange tree
When Simon Berman and his wife, Aleeza, the founders of Offer Kindness, moved to Fresno from New York in October 2025, they discovered an orange tree in the backyard of the house they rented. They ate oranges for days, but eventually, they had more fruit than they could use.
Rather than let the oranges go to waste, they began knocking on neighbors’ doors and offering them fruit. One neighbor had a lemon tree that was similarly producing more than he could eat.
“Hey, do you mind if we come and pick all of them and give them away to your neighbors?” Simon asked. The neighbor agreed.
The process continued until, about a week and a half later, the couple had collected about 300 pounds of produce. After their neighbors told them they had enough, they turned to Facebook and Nextdoor to offer the remaining fruit to anyone who wanted it.
They began driving around Fresno in the evenings, delivering 10 to 15 pound bags of produce to residents. Some recipients told them they could not afford fresh food. Others said they were sick and unable to leave their homes.
“Everyone had different stories, but we were brought into the picture of how much food insecurity exists in Fresno County that way,” Simon said.
The couple continued asking residents with backyard fruit trees if they could harvest and redistribute their excess produce. About two months into the effort, a farmer contacted them and offered them access to a mandarin farm.
They collected about 3,000 pounds of mandarins over a week or two. With more produce than they could distribute themselves, they began reaching out to local food pantries.
“They said, ‘Oh my gosh, we never have enough fresh produce. That would be amazing,’” Simon said.
As more farmers began contacting them, the couple recruited volunteers to help with the labor-intensive work of harvesting and distributing the produce. What began with a single backyard tree grew into a network of recurring volunteers and partnerships with farmers, homeowners, food pantries and other organizations.
Offer Kindness formally launched as a nonprofit in December 2025, about two months after the couple moved to Fresno.
Today, the organization says it has worked with hundreds of residential properties and receives most of its produce from commercial farms that have excess crops, have finished harvesting or were unable to sell their products.
The founder estimates that Offer Kindness currently rescues about 20,000 pounds of fresh produce each week.
The organization’s work follows the seasons. During the summer, that can mean peaches, apples, nectarines and grapes. Pomegranates follow, while winter and spring bring citrus such as mandarins, oranges, grapefruit and lemons.
Offer Kindness also holds its own public distributions. Those events can draw between 300 and 700 people, and Simon estimates the organization’s produce reaches roughly 3,000 to 4,000 people each week.
Many of their volunteers were once recipients of the food and have since returned to help set up distributions, bag fruit and hand it out to others.
The organization is also developing a food-rescue program aimed at retailers, grocery stores, packing houses and other businesses with food that might otherwise be discarded. That includes produce that does not meet retailers’ cosmetic standards but is still edible.
Offer Kindness considers itself a “mobile pantry” but they’re looking to eventually expand into a brick-and-mortar location and partner with more farmers, organizations and donors.
“We don’t care who you are, everyone needs to eat,” Simon said. “As far as religion, politics, socioeconomic, whatever. Everyone’s got to eat food, and these days, especially with all this fresh produce, it ain’t cheap. So we’re happy to give to everyone.”
