How Purchasing Food Makes Best Use of Donor Funding
Perhaps you have heard the Food Bank mention that just $1 can provide food equivalent to 3 meals in our 11-parish service area. At first glance, you may be asking yourself – ‘how is that possible?’ This article explains how it works.
As a partner Food Bank of Feeding America, the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank can source food in several ways to restock our shelves throughout the year. While we receive a large amount of USDA product and additional food shipments through Feeding America partnerships and federal programs, we also collect food from local food drives and area grocery retailers and restaurants via food rescue programs.
All these donations of food product go a long way to supplement our inventory, but alone, it is not enough to meet the demand for food assistance in our community. This is where purchasing food comes into play.
Our operations team works daily to source needed food items through a national food auction platform. This platform allows food banks and retailers to bid on available food products online at greatly reduced costs – making it possible to acquire food at a much lower cost per pound than if we had to purchase it at retail rates. The purchasing team will look to acquire everything from fresh produce and proteins to shelf-stable pastas, grains and canned goods.
“Through leveraging our national partnerships, we can secure competitive bids on truckloads of food, which significantly reduces our cost per unit,” said Monty Doggett, Director of Logistics. “For context, when a donor purchases a can of food at a retail price of $1.50 and donates it to us, that same $1.50 if donated as funds instead can be stretched to acquire three cans through our purchasing department’s strategic buying power.”
In some cases, we are also able to purchase additional bulk food product for just the cost of transportation. The product ships to us in 2,000 lb. bags via an 18-wheeler, and we then have volunteers working our bulk packaging machine to repackage that product into 1lb. and 2lb. bags for distribution to families in need.
We are the only Food Bank in the country with in-house bulk packaging machines, allowing us to greatly increase the amount of food we can distribute in a year. The bulk machines can repackage popular food items such as rice, beans, cereals, pastas and more.
“Over the past year, we’ve made significant improvements to our bulk packaging room by adding equipment and reengineering the process to where we have nearly doubled capacity,” said Monty. “With the new upgrades we now have the capability to pack up to 40,000 pounds per day.”
With these online resources and new capabilities in place, we can distribute more food at a lower cost than ever before – making best use of donor funds to feed as many people as we can with every dollar donated. To learn more about how it works or to take a tour of the Food Bank, contact us online at brfoodbank.org or call (225) 359-9940.
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