How Kunes turned Trade in Hunger into a five-season, 54-dealership tradition
- 27,000
- Meal kits in season one
- 5
- Seasons renewed
- 54
- Dealerships packing
- 4
- States on one clock
“Not only can we feed over 400 Walworth County households every month, but we can support 19 partner organizations across our community. Kunes has made a significant difference in the lives of our neighbors.”
The goal
Trade in Hunger started with a question Kunes brought to PackHope: how does a dealership group spread across four states give back together, on one clock, without it becoming dozens of separate projects?
The timing is the point. Food insecurity across the Midwest climbs when school lets out and children lose access to free and reduced lunch, so the campaign runs in June, into the gap rather than after it.
Kunes named two things it wanted out of it, and neither was a photo opportunity.
- Fight hunger where the stores are by routing the food to six regional food banks across eleven locations, which feed the pantry networks in the same communities Kunes employees live and work in.
- Bring the company together with one coordinated, company-wide giving experience for teams at every dealership, built so people would actually want to show up.
How we built it
It began as a conversation about those goals rather than a menu of event packages. The format that came out of it is a bracket competition run on one clock: every store packs on its own floor and pairs with a food bank in its own market, and the stores go head to head.
Kunes names one Driver per location to coordinate, and the rest of the store becomes the Pit Crew, building kits assembly-line style. PackHope does everything around them, so a general manager running a dealership does not also have to run a logistics program.
- Product and pallets bought and staged per store, so every floor opens to the same kit spec: peanut butter, pasta, sauce, canned vegetables, canned tuna, applesauce, oatmeal and boxed mac and cheese.
- Freight scheduled against each store's build date across four states.
- Nonprofit pairing matched store by store, so kits stay in the market that packed them.
- The leaderboard ranks stores on fastest per-kit build time, which is what makes it a competition rather than a volunteer day. The winner is crowned champion for the year.
- The After Action Report gives Kunes the season on paper: what got built, where it went, what changed.
Built for Kunes
A format running in dozens of buildings at once still has to feel like it belongs to the company running it. Four pieces were made for Kunes specifically.
- On-site posters put the event in front of customers and employees at the stores ahead of the build.
- Custom meal kit bags carried Kunes branding, so the receiving food banks knew the event and the source on sight.
- Championship t-shirts for the teams that made the final round, which turned the bracket into something people dressed for.
- Trophies for the winning teams, plus a main trophy that carries the winners season over season.
“It is awesome to have a team building event like this that not only helps cement us as a team but also helps us live by our “Faith, Family, Giving Back.” It's nice to know that this directly affected our friends and neighbors in need right here in our community.”
The results
The first season put 600 Kunes employees on the floor across 39 dealership locations in 16 cities and four states, and sent 27,000 meal kits to six regional food banks. Every employee who answered the survey said they had fun.
The second season came out of the field rather than the boardroom. Food banks started asking for the Kunes bags by name, and employees who had learned what their local pantries needed began volunteering there on their own time.
So year two changed shape. The bracket was streamlined to a single round, kit volume went up, and PackHope added bulk donations to each food bank on top of the competition, so partners could route those goods into their other programs.
By 2026 the campaign had grown from 39 locations to 54, and that season packed 250,000 meals across four states in ten days. The pattern behind that growth is older than the campaign: Kunes has given 10% of annual profits to community organizations through the Kunes Family Foundation since 1996.
- 250,000 meals packed in the 2026 campaign, June 8 to 17.
- 54 dealerships packing across Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.
- 27,000 meal kits donated in the first season.
- 600 employees packed across 39 dealership locations that year.
- Six food banks, eleven locations received the first season's kits and fed them into their pantry networks.
- Every survey respondent said they had fun at the Trade in Hunger event.
- Five seasons renewed, with more stores each time.
- Television and press coverage across their markets.
- Champion of Charity AutoSuccess Magazine.
“Our team understands that growth means nothing if we're not strengthening the communities we call home, especially when families are struggling with food insecurity.”
