Grocers, & Manufacturers Can Get By With A Lot Fewer Dumpsters If They Donate The Food And Let The Food Bank Truck Come By And Pick It Up.
All these donations going to food pantries, shelters, etc., are a real two-way street. Donating food is a break-even proposition for manufacturers.
To my way of thinking, it’s more advantageous for a farmer, grocer, or food manufacturer to donate the food to a Food Bank. All the food coming into the Food Bank has been diverted from a landfll. One advantage (or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it) to donating the food is that there are fewer dumpsters for people to dive in.
Some months I’d be lucky and get maybe 80% of what I needed. Other months I would get next to nothing that I needed. When that happened, I thought ahead and got what was available. Hands down, the most challenging month to get food was August because the food drives and food donations are seasonal. I finally decided that food donations are down in the late summer because nobody thinks of Food Banks and Pantries when they’re on vacation. One August, I bought 25 cases of water because I could get them and everything else was either scarce or nonexistent. That water came in very handy after Hurricane Sandy visited.
The Food Banks send out refrigerated trucks to pick up the excess. They get it to the warehouse where volunteers sort it and make it available to agencies as quickly as possible. The goal is to feed the hungry with the excess.
The second most challenging month is December. The first two Decembers I was the coordinator were dismal in the pantry because I hadn’t yet learned how to stockpile the food in advance. I was unprepared for this because, for one thing, I didn’t even have a storeroom to put the food in.
When the months were lean at the pantry, I made extra trips to Latham and returned with fresh produce. Fresh fruits and vegetables covered “a lot of ills” in the pantry because the shoppers didn’t have the money to buy fresh foods and they were always hungry for something fresh.
Thanks so much for reading about the food pantry.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Mike and Mike and the Air Conditioner
The pantry made demands on all of us. For one thing, there were guidelines, rules, boundaries, and no-nos, handed down by not only health codes, the Food Bank guidelines, HPNAP guidelines, but the building rules.
The building committee had strict rules about what hours we could be in the building, where the cardboard could go, when and where we could use what portion of the parking lot, where the people could stand in the overcrowded hallway, what food could or could not be stored where, when the produce and bread could come in the building, how many chairs could be placed in the hallway, etc.
I was in the pantry arranging the produce on the shelves one summer evening in the month before the building committee limited our hours in the building so severely.
The night was warm for Woodstock and I put a box fan on the sill in each of the 3 windows to keep the air moving in the pantry in an effort to retard the rotting of the produce, the lettuce, tomatoes, greens, and herbs.
Mike Cooter stomped in the room with a serious scowl on his face. His body posture shouted “anger”. Cooter was a member of the building committee and everyone connected with the pantry and the church knew that the building committee assumed total control over every detail of what happened in the building.
“Get these fans out of the windows.” he said.
“I’m trying to keep some of the produce from rotting so we’ll have fresh food for the shoppers tomorrow” I replied. “We lost 50% of our produce last week. We need the fans to keep the food cool.”
“Get the fans out of the windows NOW” he yelled. Cooter had gone from disapproving to threatening.
And I was scared.
Luckily for me, Mike Lourenso was standing in the shadows. He stepped out into the light.
“Back off Cooter” Mike said with an air of authority. “I was a Brooklyn cop for 23 years. Calm down now or I’ll take you down.” I wasn’t sure what “I’ll take you down” meant but I really liked the sound of those words.
Cooter took a deep breath and backed out of the small room. He took another couple of deep breaths and appeared to be accepting what he had just heard from Mike Lourenso.
Cooter returned to the room. “We need to fix this problem now Cooter. She’s driving 90 miles round trip every week for a truckload of produce and then losing half of it here in this room because of the heat.
Can we have an air conditioner?”
Cooter appeared to be thinking about – and considering – the request.
“Okay” said finally. He appeared to have reluctantly come to terms with the situation.
“Get those fans out of here now and get an air conditioner in a window now. Put it in that window” he said as he pointed to a specific window.
“Now? It’s after 9:30.”
“Yeah. NOW.”
“Okay, I’ve got one in my home. I’ll go get it and we’ll put it in tonight.”
And he did. He drove to his home, took a window unit out of a bedroom, and returned to the pantry with the unit and an electric drill. Together, we installed it at 10:30 that same night.
I, for one, was grateful for many things that night.
First, I was grateful for a volunteer who knew how to be a cop.
Second, I was grateful we could get our hands on an air conditioner fast – before Cooter changed his mind.
Third, I was really grateful that we were going to be able to have a better quality of fresh food to serve to our shoppers.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Bad Back Bob
Bad Back Bob was a shopper/volunteer always available to help. A veteran with disabilities, he suffered from nightmares, serious spinal issues, an occasional seizure, PTSD, migraines, etc. He often came early to the pantry on Wednesday to help unload the food. We all felt that he shouldn’t do this lifting because of the back issues but he really wanted to feel like he was helping in some way.
“Leave my back to me Thurman. I’m here to help. I just want to be a part of this pantry.”
At one point, because of the seizures, Bob was unable to drive to the pantry so he got a ride or hitch hiked over from Motel 19 to help.
Bob rode with us to Latham to the Food Bank whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the garage distributing meat whenever we asked.
Bob helped break down hundreds of boxes on Wednesdays whenever we asked.
Bob helped get the food in the pantry on Tuesday mornings whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the pantry during the monthly food delivery whenever we asked.
In short, Bob did everything he could to help keep the pantry going, whenever we asked.
When Bob finally returned to Model 19 after a shift, he would cook up the food that he shopped for and share it with other residents who couldn’t make it to the pantry that day.
It’s important to note here that Veterans have special needs. They return home from wars with illnesses, injuries, and they need housing, employment, counseling, health care. They and their families have many adjustments to make as they get to know one another again after the vet has been in this terrible struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recovery can take years. We still see homeless Viet Nam vets.
Gioia Timpanelli
“No one in the world, yes, in the world, can tell a story better than Gioia Timpanelli”. – Frank McCourt
One afternoon I got a call from Ann King. “Hi Thurman. I just heard from Gioia Timpanelli. She wants you to call her. She wants to do a show for the pantry. She wants to do a storytelling evening.”
WOW! One call led to another and Gioia Timpanelli worked some real magic. She….Mary Savage, Dawn Meola, Laurie McGrath, Jean Druffner, Janet Carles, Karen Pillsworth, and Ann Epner….created a totally mystical and magical evening for us.
The evening began with a surprise visit from the Rosendale Marching Band.
Then, each woman told a story which transported us all to another time and place. Each story carried magic. Each story hinted of a miracle in each of our lives. The message was especially important to us as pantry people. Our pantry moved day-by-day on the hope and reality of miracles.
Gioia put together this evening from beginning to end.
Gioia gathered together her storytelling friends. They came from far and wide to tell a story for the pantry.,
Gioia went to the Daily Freeman, the Kingston newspaper, and got a gorgeous front page spread over the fold with a wonderful photo (taken by her daughter, no less).
Gioia managed the rehearsals.
Gioia hosted the evening.
And then, finally, Gioia managed the donations.
This was such a gift for our pantry. Gioia is a national treasure. For her to orchestrate this evening said volumes about the needs of the hungry. For me, this evening not only brought in much needed money, it brought validation to our cause, our determination to feed the hungry.
Blessings to Gioia…and storytellers the world over.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
The Food Coming to Our Pantry from the Food Bank Has Been Diverted From a Landfill
There’s absolutely no excuse for anyone in our great country to go hungry.
The third category was Donated Food. This was usually canned or boxed food in really good condition which manufacturers couldn’t sell or supermarkets had overstocked.
All the cans had labels in good condition and none of the cans were dented.
Popular donated items included Barilla Pasta, Breyer’s Ice Cream, Cheez-It Crackers, Chobani Yogurt, Hellman’s Mayonnaise, Hunt’s Products, Kellogg’s Cereals, Lipton Teas, Nestea, Pepsi products, Progresso Soup, Suave Shampoos, Tide soap, Triscuit Crackers, V-8 Juices.
Co-op was the fourth category. The food in this category was offered at more or less grocery store prices. Coop food supplements the donated food inventory. The Coop food enables the Food Bank to have an inventory which meets the needs of the agencies. Except for toilet paper and eggs, I rarely bought from this category because our pantry simply couldn’t afford the costs. Even so, the eggs were a few cents cheaper than anywhere else and the toilet paper was important to the households with no funds.
Eggs were always a challenge. They’re only available through the pantry in the Co-op section of the catalogue. They were rarely in the refrigerator case at the Food Bank when we went for produce and dairy products weekly. Purchasing the eggs locally was hard because we needed about 150-200 dozen eggs at a time. My main source when we couldn’t connect with the food bank was Aldi. They were about the only store that really didn’t care how many dozen eggs we bought. Price Chopper in Saugerties was a real lifesaver a couple of times also.
One winter I was having a really tough time getting soup. Then, Progresso donated a large load of soup to the Food Bank. Hurrah! After hurricane Sandy, ConAgra sent a generous load of canned goods to the food bank. To this day, two favorite words in my vocabulary are Progresso and ConAgra.
Thanks for reading these Food Bank posts. I hope they’re answering questions for you. Tomorrow’s post will begin with a discussion of dumpster diving and months when we had almost nothing.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Bonnie, Michelle, Nora and the Salvage Food Order at The Food Bank
In yesterday’s post, I started the monthly order.
In a good month, I ordered 16 cases each of a large variety of canned/boxed goods: peanut butter, canned beans, canned refried beans, canned green beans, pasta, and oatmeal for example.
In a bad month, I would only be able to get my allotment of a couple of things: tomato sauce, and dried plums, for example.
Bonnie, my primary contact for the Food Bank food orders, spent time telling me politely on Monday and Tuesday that most of what I wanted was already out of stock. As the week progressed, the outlook usually improved. By Friday, some of the stock had been replenished, new merchandise was on the shelves and the order was as good as it was going to get. Michelle and Nora were also available when Bonnie’s line was busy.
These 3 women, Bonnie, Michelle, and Nora, spent their work days on the phone listening to desperate pantry coordinators, soup kitchen managers, shelter directors, ordering food. While they were assisting an agency person on the phone there was always a list of people waiting for their turn to add their needs to the day’s list.
Generally, food items were depleted as fast as they came on the computer screen. That’s why we called throughout the week. Nothing was ever available for more than a day or 2.
“We just got in a shipment of USDA” was music to my ears.
Then would come the order for salvage bulk food categories. These were banana boxes filled with 40 pounds of canned/boxed/bottled foods in specific categories such as fruits and vegetables, condiments, juices, pantry, soup, etc. As a pantry, I was able to get this food at 16 cents per pound. These boxes were wonderful. They were wonderful to me, anyway.
In reality, they were something else altogether.
Salvage food is made up of the dented cans and crumpled boxes that are pushed aside at the grocery store.
They are either collected at the store and brought over by the store itself to the Food Bank or a Food Bank truck drives around picking the food up and taking it to the Food Bank. Food Bank volunteers clean and sort these items. Salvage boxes offer variety to pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters. This is where we get the occasional spice or herb, can of olive oil, box of cooking chocolate, jar of pickles.
Another favorite refrain I liked to hear from Bonnie or Michelle was “I can let you have 5 boxes of pantry today.” Once I was able to order 24 boxes of salvage products. I felt like I was being rewarded by the universe for something I must’ve done right. I never quite figured out what it was that I did. But this I know: life was beautiful that week.
Thanks for reading this post.
There is absolutely no excuse for anyone in our country to go hungry.
Peace and Food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Paul Shultis, Jr., and The Men of Woodstock and 4 Categories of food
In the last post Gene Huckle suggested that I go to a Woodstock Town Board meeting and try to get a truck.
So I did. I went to a Town Board meeting and asked the Town to drive a truck over and pick up the food for the pantry. What did I have to lose, right? Well, that request went nowhere. However, townspeople responded. Calls came in from area residents. And several volunteered monthly.
After that, I would put an item in the “Woodstock Times” newspaper on the week before the shipment arrival asking for volunteers. People just showed up at the Hannaford’s.
Paul Shultis, Jr., became a “regular”. He showed up every month driving a heavy duty pickup with a trailer attached to the rear. His rig could carry 4,000 pounds easy. I loved, loved, loved the sight of that rig coming up to the pantry door filled with food. Paul Shulti, Jr., took time off from work every month so he could caravan the food from the Hannaford’s to the pantry.
We would never in a million years have been able to get the food to the pantry without the generosity and dedication that Paul and the townspeople showed as they arrived at the Hannaford’s parking lot every month.
Each month I spent the week before the delivery day calling the Food Bank daily to place the food order. I started the order on Monday and then added to it throughout the week. On Monday I ordered food from four different categories:
USDA
Donated Foods
Salvage Food
Coop Food
I ordered everything I could get from the free United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food first. The USDA food is part of the government’s farm subsidy program which includes, among other things, distributing excess food to the hungry.
The next post will focus on how the Food Bank works to get the food for us.
Thanks again for reading this blog/book.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
I ordered
Bringing it Home to the Food Pantry – Part 1
“Their income is going down while food costs are not.”-William S. Simon
Beginning with this post, the next few posts will focus on how the food actually gets to the pantry from the Food Bank. This is a huge part of the coordinator’s job. Also, whenever anyone speaks to me about the food pantry, the question they always ask first is “Where does the food come from? How do you get it to the pantry?”
What follows is the answer.
Once it became obvious that the 3-day rule directed by Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) was pretty much here to stay. I began to try to get the food to the pantry. After all, a 3-day supply of food for everyone in the household is a far cry from a can of tuna, a box of cereal, and a jar of peanut butter.
The bottom line here is that the whole pantry was turned upside down. I placed an order every month from the Food Bank. The Food Bank of Northeastern New York has a monthly delivery route throughout its territory and our shipment arrived in the parking lot behind the Hannaford’s in the Kingston Plaza Shopping Center on a prearranged Tuesday morning, usually on the third Tuesday,. We had a standing 9:15 a.m. appointment.
I began asking individuals at the different congregations to help bring over the food from Kingston. Every month was a new beginning because I was relying on whatever congregation had volunteers in the pantry each month. I asked Carmen Adler, my contact at Christ Lutheran Church, to help me one month. One volunteer showed up to help. Although he was willing to help, he had a bad back and his pickup had faulty brakes. I knew I had to do something.
Gene Huckle dropped by the pantry. “What you need is a truck, Thurman. Go to a Town Board meeting and ask the town to send a truck over to Kingston for the food. Delivery day takes only a couple of hours of truck time each month. Surely there’s an available truck somewhere.”
Go Gene!
In the next post, we’ll find out what happened with the truck and begin to understand how I ordered the food.
Thanks for following this blog/book.
There is absolutely no excuse for anyone in our great nation to go hungry,
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
In the Food Pantry Blog – It’s All About Respect – Part 2
For the followers of the Buddhist, Hindus, and other Eastern religions, feeding the hungry is about selfless service. The pantry had a few practicing Buddhists and one practicing Hindu.
Jo, a Buddhist from Palden Sakya, sometimes came on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 to help bag the bread which Prasida brought from the Bread Alone bakery in Boiceville. Most of the time we had 2 or 3 volunteers to help but occasionally Jo would just bag the bread herself. Stuart Kline sometimes came to help her. When no one was available to help, she didn’t complain, criticize, or appear to judge. Occasionally, if there was time after she packed the bread, she grabbed a broom and swept.
The Hindu, Prasida, was a strong woman of Polish descent. She felt nothing weighed too much for her to carry and no task was too large or too small. Prasida started the day on Wednesday at 6:00 a.m. by driving our truck, Miriam’s Well, to Latham for food. At the Food Bank, she shopped and selected about 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of produce: lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, baked goods, yogurt, local cheese, fresh milk, mushrooms, carrots, anything organic she could find. She loaded it onto the truck. Then drove back to Woodstock where she unloaded the food off the truck and hauled it into the pantry. After that, she went with Tall Thin John, Bad Back Bob, and Guy Oddo to Woodstock Commons to distribute food there to the residents.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Prasida hustled back to the pantry and opened it up promptly at 3:00 as she signed in 200-300 people for the pantry.
Then, about 4:15, Prasida turned her desk job over to Guy and drove off down the road to Bread Alone in Vanessa with Ann King to get the bread. She returned exactly at 6:00 with the Dodge Grand Caravan packed to the roof with freshly baked bread.
Then, Prasida unloaded the bread, and resumed her desk job until the pantry closed at 7:00, when she cleaned the floors. WHEW
Having watched volunteers from the three religions in action, I truly believe the Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus are more active in their approach. I never once heard one Jew, Buddhist, or Hindu try to turn people away or refer to the “unworthy hungry”. “Unworthy hungry” is a term I first heard from a local Lutheran Minister. I learned very quickly in the game that area Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Dutch Reformed followers were familiar with the label.
So, I suppose that my feeling is that the Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus have owned the concept of “feeding the poor” since the beginning of time. Christians picked up on the “feeding the poor” concept that Jesus taught.
With the next few posts, we’ll focus on the most asked about part of pantry management: where the food comes from.
Thank you for reading these posts in this blog/book. Pantries are hidden away places that more people need to know about.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
In The Food Pantry Blog, It’s All About Respect
“In the new millennium, our world requires us more than ever to accept the oneness of humanity.” – His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Different religions approach hunger and feeding the hungry in different ways. Christians cannot have pantries without invoking the name of Jesus.
For the Jewish pantry worker, feeding the hungry is more about doing good works…doing good for its own sake. Jews, of course, aren’t concerned with communion. There’s no reward or paying back.
The Woodstock Jewish Congregation took its turn in the pantry twice yearly. At first, when we were struggling with getting cars to caravan the monthly shipment over from Kingston, congregation members formed a caravan of cars and SUVs to bring the food over. Congregation members volunteered to work in the pantry during the month.
One month, Richard Spool simply showed up with lumber and all the tools needed to build foundation platforms for our shelving in the storeroom. He came into the storeroom, did all the work necessary to build absolutely perfect platforms and then left, personifying the feeling I got from the congregation members that their job at the pantry was to do what needed to be done and then, at the end of the month, melt away into the community and remain anonymous until their next turn. There was no quibbling about the pantry serving the unworthy hungry. None of the volunteers even seemed to be on the lookout for the unworthy hungry.
Richard must have liked being in the pantry because, several months later, he joined our board and became the treasurer.
Many of the volunteers left checks in my hand as they went out the door for the last time at the end of their “tour”. They were gracious, cheerful, smart, capable, wonderful. I could not have asked for a better group of volunteers. As a group, I adore Jewish Women. I’m convinced that, as a group, there’s nothing they cannot do.
Thank you for reading this post.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
