Jose Guardiola, program coordinator for The Salvation Army in Arroyo Grande, is one of the non-profit partners participating in the Food Bank Coalition’s Retail Program.
Every day, the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County secures fresh, perishable food from retailers across San Luis Obispo County. The Food Bank Coalition then makes this food available to a large network of county wide food pantries and meal programs to alleviate hunger in SLO County. The $50,000 grant from Feeding America and Walmart was used to purchase key infrastructure items to address food safety and storage capacity limitations, so that the Food Bank Coalition’s non-profit partners could have access to fresh foods directly from retailers.
Grant-funded equipment included: commercial refrigerators and freezers, steel shelving racks, thermal blankets, infrared thermometers, heavy-duty plastic utility carts, and digital utility scales. The infrastructure purchase identified above helped build capacity by providing non-profit partners with the equipment they identified that would allow them to transport and store food safely and to comply with reporting requirements. This equipment strengthened the Retail Program by increasing the number of non-profit partners rescuing food, the number of store rescues, and the pounds of food rescued.
“We have seen a dramatic increase of direct rescue by our non-profit partners in the second half of this grant cycle, allowing for the total capture of 463,878 pounds,” said Wend Lewis, chief operations officer. “These rescues have been collected, weighed, reported upon and distributed to clients solely by non-profit partners in our network increasing their efforts, and allowing the capture of 169,639 pounds beyond our original projections.”
Feeding America and Walmart have been instrumental in helping the Food Bank Coalition rescue and distribute more perishable food from retailers. The increased capacity that resulted from this grant has helped meet the Food Bank Coalition’s goal of giving clients greater access to food resources, particularly perishable foods of high nutritional value, and ensure that every SLO County resident has enough food to eat.
About the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County:
The Food Bank Coalition is a non-profit, tax exempt organization, serving all of San Luis Obispo County through food distribution programs and a network of community partners. Our mission is to alleviate hunger in San Luis Obispo County and build a healthier community. Last year they distributed nearly 6 million pounds of food to help our neighbors faced with hunger. Nearly half of the food they distributed was fresh produce. To learn how you can help, please visit www.slofoodbank.org.
About Feeding America:
Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States. Through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, they provide meals to more than 46 million people each year. Feeding America also supports programs that prevent food waste and improve food security among the people they serve; educates the public about the problem of hunger; and advocates for legislation that protects people from going hungry.