Interview with Claire Bleiler, Chief of Staff at Lemontree

by Casey Dalrymple

Founded in 2018, Lemontree is an online food access resource that directs clients nationwide to local food pantries and kitchens, offering live phone assistance to clients when they need it. The site uses client feedback to maintain a live feed of vital information regarding the hours, stock, and availability of various food access points.

As Chief of Staff for this nonprofit organization, Claire Bleiler wears many hats. Not only does she manage Lemontree’s corporate partnerships, assist in grant writing, and coordinate the nonprofit’s volunteer program, she also has her finger on the pulse of how the problem of food insecurity is developing across the United States and has helped develop Lemontree’s vision of a client-forward, empathetic experience for all of its users.

Herself an alumna of Hunter College, Claire was kind enough to speak with Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center about this vision and her work.

What makes Lemontree different from other online food access resources?

What makes Lemontree distinct is that we’ve started using technology that people use every day. You can call an Uber from your phone. I can order Instacart from my computer. But that technology hadn’t extended to food insecurity. Where Lemontree fills that gap is making sure that the information out there on food pantry soup kitchens is accurate, and also providing that information in a way that prioritizes hospitality and really fights the stigma of food insecurity.

Our clients really trust us and rely on us for not just information on food access, but also to manage their food access. We have calendars with food pantry schedules. We have reminders when your pantry is open. We bring that technological piece to make food access a much simpler, more cohesive process, to access the food that’s there.

What does this user experience look like?

When you log in to Lemontree, all you need to do is type in your phone number. We will immediately text you the best pantries around you with that information. When we give you that info, we don’t just kind of list it out. We automatically create a client dashboard, so you have your own platform that has all of the pantries recommended to you — it has a calendar; it has reminders. 

Something that lacks pretty heavily in the food and security space is a knowledge of what the actual experience is on the ground — the lived experience from people doing this every week. When we refer somebody to a pantry, we collect a really quick survey, and clients are also able to send us pictures of the food they receive. Using that client feedback, we’re actually able to keep updating our information and keep it really accurate. 

Lemontree also offers free live support for clients. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

When a client texts us, they’re immediately responded to from our system, just letting them know we’ve received it. When they receive that text and they respond, it goes right to our specialist team, who actually works one-on-one with clients.

So let’s say that initial text goes out. It has a couple of pantries to get you started, but let’s say those didn’t work for you for some reason. You respond back. Our specialist team will work with you, get to know you, figure out what didn’t work about it, what are you looking for, and then really bring in that warmth to help them access the food that they need. 

The food system is very complicated — very overwhelming. To have that one-on-one help when you need it to access what you need for your family is really crucial for our clients, and it’s a pretty easy, low-touch way to communicate.

How did you build your network, and how does Lemontree organize all this data?

Our Chief Technological Officer, Sam Cole, has a lot of experience with creating softwares that have to handle a lot of data and a lot of real-time data. We collect this feedback from clients — a kind of one minute survey. When you click that survey, all that data gets collected inside our system. 

We are realizing that this data is very valuable. We have tens of thousands of reviews of what an experience in the food access system is like. We also have tons of pictures, and that data becomes harder to read and catalog. So how do we use it? 

Something that we are looking to build and fund this year is an AI model that can read that data — that can read a picture. So let’s say I recommend a pantry to you and you send a picture back with all this fresh produce. We want to have an AI model that reads that picture and says, “Okay, here’s the kale. Awesome. Fresh produce. Okay, here’s a kosher item. Awesome. We know this pantry had kosher items today,” so that we have a really specific idea of what people can expect when they go to a food pantry.

But that kind of outcome is only possible by cataloging and identifying all this data, and that’s our big mission for this year. We have a great way of using it, where those survey questions feed back into our recommendation loop, but there’s so much more we can do with this data to affect not just change for our clients but systems change.

We saw that just yesterday you helped more than 12,000 people find food! How many people are in your network at any given moment?

When I started with Lemontree in September of 2023, we were serving around two to three thousand households a day. This summer, we hit a record of over 13,000. I’d say regularly we serve between 11 and 12,000 consistently, which is just such a huge increase. In 2024 alone, we’ve helped over 250,000 families. 

Lemontree is a nationwide operation. How is food insecurity different across the country?

Lemontree started in New York City, and as you know, New York has a really dense public transit system. So you don’t have to necessarily take in transportation as a factor in terms of food access. As we expanded outwards — Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit — we learned that the public transportation networks weren’t as dense. And so accessing that food has another complication. For example, a pantry is open on a Tuesday, and that’s the only day you can go, but it’s 10 miles off your train line. How do we make that work? 

There’s a larger issue where there is no real uniformity in how many food pantries or soup kitchens there are in these areas. In New York, you have this dense transportation, but you also have a lot of really excellent food pantries and soup kitchens. As you get to other areas, you might find that they have barely any soup kitchens or their food pantries aren’t open as much. So there’s not a lot of uniformity in what access looks like. And as you go to different locations, you can see how that transportation piece really can play a huge part in somebody’s ability to access food.

What else are we overlooking when it comes to food access? What misconceptions do most people have regarding food insecurity?

I think the thing that’s missing is changing the stigma, not just on food insecurity, but around food pantry and soup kitchen access. There are over a thousand quality, wonderful pantries and soup kitchens in the city. Most people have no idea they’re there, because you’re only thinking about them if you’re in an emergency situation, because that’s how we present those things — it’s the bottom of the barrel. It’s your last resort. And so people aren’t aware that the food is there. 

That’s what the technology is for. That’s what we’re working on. I truly, without a doubt, believe this is a solvable issue. I know food is there. I see it. We work with it. I know it’s there.

I don’t think that other people know how solvable it is. It seems really big. We spend billions of dollars a year combating it. It gets worse every year. Clearly what we’re doing is not working. 

Let’s try something else. Listen to the clients we’re helping and try to pivot how we present this to people that need the access. How do we make this so that it’s approachable? How do we make it so that people feel comfortable going there? 

Fast Facts

Grew up in: Fleetwood, PA
City or town you call home: Brooklyn, NY
Job title: Chief of Staff at Lemontree
Background and education: I received a bachelor’s in Psychology with a dual minor in History and Sociology. I spent my teens and 20s convinced that law school was the only next step for me and psychology seemed like a good degree to go into it with. 
One word you would use to describe our food system: Resilient or hopeful (or maybe hopefully resilient?) 
Food policy hero: Niyeti Shah
Your breakfast this morning: Orgain breakfast shake with leftover roasted broccoli from dinner. What can I say? I contain multitudes!
Favorite food: Pennsylvania Dutch Potato Filling
Favorite food hangout: There’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner with maybe 10 seats in the lower east side of NYC called B&H Dairy. It’s been open since the 1930s and has the best vegetarian lasagna for $9! If you aren’t looking closely, you’ll walk by it. 
Food policy social media must follow: Food Fix by Helena Bottemiller Evich! She also has a newsletter you can subscribe to. 10/10 recommend. 

Related Articles

Subscribe To Weekly NYC Food Policy Watch Newsletter
Subscribe to our weekly email newsletter today to receive updates on the latest news, reports and event information
No Thanks
Thanks for signing up. You must confirm your email address before we can send you. Please check your email and follow the instructions.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.
×
×