11/7/2023 0 Comments Grocery stores donate food“Donations from our stores are continuing across the country, and we are donating as much as we can,” Tricia Moriarty, a Walmart spokesperson, said in a statement. Grocery stores say they’re still doing the best they can. But Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, says on the whole, the food donations from grocers are far from the usual amount and not nearly enough to meet the unprecedented demand. Grocery stores like Texas’ H-E-B are still donating money and food to local pantries. “Well, right now we have money, and we couldn’t get our hands on the food.” What we normally tell people is the monetary donations help us the most,” said Desta Crawford, board president of the Hereford Food Pantry in the Texas panhandle. But they’re facing the same empty shelves as their patrons, and grocery stores can’t always fill their bulk orders. Grocery stores are still donating perishable food like fruits, vegetables and baked goods with some regularity, but items with longer shelf lives like canned goods, pastas and beans are harder to source.įood banks typically supplement the donated food they get from stores with direct purchases. Many food banks are enrolled in surplus programs in which grocers donate food they can no longer sell - like granola bar boxes with a missing bar, crushed cereal packages and baked goods nearing the expiration date - but for weeks, grocery stores have been limiting their donations because of their own dwindling supply. “The primary source of donated food is the retail community, and that tends to be flowing out as quickly as they can bring it in,” said Dan Maher, president of the Southeast Texas Food Bank. But she said last week the pantry was only able to give away less than half of that per day because it's receiving smaller shipments from the grocery stores it relies on. But because of the pandemic, “instead of that fire hose, we're drinking from a water fountain.” Grocery stores depletedĬitySquare Food Pantry used to give out about 75 pounds of food daily, said Liz Salas, who works at the Dallas nonprofit. “If this were a normal natural disaster like Hurricane Harvey, there's automatically a fire hose of resources that flow to our food banks during that time," said Jamie Olson, director of government affairs for the food bank network Feeding Texas, which serves 4.5 million Texans annually. And on the supply side, food is harder to come by since grocery stores have less surplus to donate because their own shelves are still depleted from panic buying. Volunteers are scarce as Texans are being encouraged to stay at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Across the state, demand for assistance from food banks is off the charts as thousands of Texans who are suddenly out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic are visiting their local nonprofits in search of pantry staples to feed their families.Īt the same time, food banks are facing brand new challenges that make it more difficult than ever to keep their shelves stocked.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |