Every Monday morning, volunteers from First Ridgeland drive two trucks, each equipped with a trailer, to Sam’s Club in Pearl to pick up a donation of food that might otherwise go to waste.
When the drivers return to the church with the trailers filled, volunteers from the community and local businesses assist church members in repacking the items, which often include fresh meat, produce and desserts, into smaller portions that will be given out later that morning.
First Ridgeland’s Central Mississippi Food Pantry distributes food in a drive-through line to 125 people on a first-come, first-served basis each Monday from 11:45 a.m. until 1 p.m.
“That works out to feed 450 to 500 people a week,” said Debbie Upchurch, director of Central Mississippi Food Pantry. “That’s about 1,600 people a month.”
People usually show up hours before the distribution begins, Upchurch said, and come from six counties. They learn about it by word of mouth, she said.
When the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was disrupted due to the federal government shutdown earlier this year and benefit payments were delayed, the Central Mississippi Food Pantry provided for an additional 25 people a week, Upchurch said, using food from the Mississippi Food Network, food drives and the donations from Sam’s Club.
Rescuing food that food brokers and other sources can’t sell for various reasons helped the Good Samaritan Center, a nonprofit social service agency in Jackson, meet the increased need its clients experienced when SNAP benefits were not available, said Kathy Clem, executive director at Good Sam.
A $5,000 donation and a $7,500 donation from strategic partners also helped keep the Good Sam food pantry filled with shelf-stable foods such as canned goods, she said.
“Now that the SNAP benefits have posted, it’s not as dire,” Clem said, although hunger and food insecurity still abound.
During the covid shutdown, Good Sam began as part of its “Hub for the Hungry” collecting frozen meats, dairy products and fruits and veggies from various sources and has continued that practice.
“During covid lots of places like the schools shut down, and they order a lot of food in advance,” she said.
Good Sam tapped into the newfound opportunity and soon found itself needing a refrigerated truck and freezer truck to hold items until representatives of food pantries could pick them up
“What we realized is that there’s a lot of food waste,” Clem said. “And there’s nothing wrong with the food.”
Collecting from a grocery store vegetables or fruit that may be bruised and are unlikely to sell works for a food pantry because any blemished items can be discarded, if necessary, and the ones in good shape can be repackaged, Clem said. It also makes it possible to share fresh fruits and veggies and go beyond providing shelf-stable, processed foods, she said.
A grocery store may discover a box holding a case of cereal is damaged and donate that, she said, but only a box or two of the cereal is damaged and the rest is fine.
To accommodate frozen food, Good Sam acquired a forklift, pallet jacks, walk-in freezer that looks like a shipping container and is named “Mort. “The name is short for mortuary, which was its previous use in New York during covid.
Now, Good Sam collects donations from a food broker once a week and it’s usually enough to fill six or seven pallets, she said.
A donation may consist of items with a short sell buy date that customers are not inclined to purchase because they want a date that is longer out or a case of the food with a new label that customers aren’t accustomed to seeing, she said, naming common reasons for the donations.
“I got a call a commercial chicken plant that mis-made sausage for a local restaurant,” Clem said. “They left out one spice. They plan to deliver to us all of this sausage in the next week or so. We’ll get any food pantry that has space to come and get some.”
Since covid, Good Samaritan has rescued 10 million pounds of food.
Clem believes plenty of opportunities to collect food that might otherwise be discarded but is still fine to eat remain despite the work of Good Sam and Gleaners, another long-established Jackson nonprofit, and other nonprofits.
The late Gloria Martinson, a Jackson resident, led the way in rescuing food when she established the Volunteers of Gleaners in 1986 to collect prepared food from groceries, restaurants and other locations and distribute it to various nonprofits.
Mississippi’s food donation law protects individuals and organizations from civil liability when donating “apparently wholesome food” in good faith.
Good Samaritan, like Gleaners, shares food it collects with other nonprofits that it has vetted such as Community Stewpot Services, which operates a soup kitchen and a food pantry in Jackson.
Before SNAP benefits became an issue, Stewpot Community Services had already experienced an increase in its food ministries, which include the community kitchen that serves lunch and a food pantry, said Rev. Jill Buckley, executive director of Stewpot.
Beginning in November during the SNAP benefit situation, Stewpot extended the hours for its food pantry for people who needed help and made sure people knew Stewpot serves lunch every day (no appointment needed), she said.
Donations of food and volunteers to help stock the pantry shelves and assist people with their shopping help the pantry that is set up like a grocery store operate in the way it should, Buckley said. “We want to make sure we’re good stewards of what we receive,” she said.
Both the need for donations of food and for volunteers to get them on the shelves were met during the critical time when people needed more help than usual, she said. “It’s been truly remarkable,” Buckley said.
Due to the disruption in its usual operations, Stewpot for the first time in 30 years will not offer Christmas baskets, Buckley said, but that doesn’t mean the people usually served by that program will go without food. They can shop at the Stewpot food pantry for what they need instead of receiving a basket with a holiday meal kit already put together in it.
