Sioux Honey, Cub Donate 9,720 Bottles to Food Bank

Nearly 2.5 tons of honey is heading to food pantry shelves across Minnesota and western Wisconsin after Sioux Honey and regional grocer Cub jointly donated 9,720 bottles of SUE BEE® honey to Second Harvest Heartland on November 13.

The contribution represents a meaningful volume of product for a food bank network that serves a broad geographic footprint in the Upper Midwest. For food retailers and foodservice operators watching corporate social responsibility commitments in the grocery and packaged-goods space, the partnership between a regional grocer and a farmer-owned honey cooperative signals how channel relationships can extend beyond the shelf into community impact programs.

Why It Matters

Honey is a high-demand, shelf-stable commodity that food banks actively seek out, making it a practical choice for large-scale product donations. Sioux Honey, a farmer-owned cooperative, produces the SUE BEE brand, one of the more recognizable honey labels in retail grocery. Pairing with Cub—a well-established Midwest grocery chain—allowed the two organizations to coordinate logistics for a donation at significant scale. Industry observers tracking food retail and community investment trends will note this model, where a supplier and retailer co-execute a donation, as an increasingly common framework for moving volume product to hunger-relief organizations efficiently.

Sector Context

Food insecurity across the Upper Midwest has kept regional food banks busy, and partnerships between consumer packaged goods brands and grocery retailers have become a recognized mechanism for directing surplus or dedicated product to those networks. For operators and buyers engaged in restaurant and hospitality sourcing, understanding supply-chain relationships like the Sioux Honey–Cub collaboration also illustrates how cooperative agricultural brands engage in community-facing initiatives alongside their retail and foodservice distribution. Food & Beverage Magazine has covered the growing role of branded food partnerships in hunger-relief efforts as corporate giving strategies evolve across the industry.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.