Each week, volunteers from The Food Bank Inc. pick up excess food from LongHorn Steakhouse, Pizza Hut and Subway’s six Statesboro locations. Other stops include Bi-Lo and Walmart, where food approaching the sell-by date also goes to help families in need.
About 40 percent of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. That’s an appalling thought to Joe Bill Brannon, the Food Bank Inc. manager and lead volunteer.
Sometimes he accepts more donated groceries than Statesboro’s food bank can use. When that happens, he shares with food banks in neighboring counties and even with for-profit nursing homes.
“Before I’ll throw it in the dumpster, I’ll give it to Bill Gates,” Brannon said. “You know, food’s meant to be eaten. It’s not meant to be thrown away.”
Of all local donor businesses, the Walmart Supercenter gives the most, in boxes stacked on seven to eight shipping pallets each week. A store employee calls Brannon when a load is ready. Sometimes there is a glut of strawberries or bananas at the peak of ripeness. Breads and desserts from the deli and bakery are more common.
Volunteers from the food bank pick up items from Bi-Lo seven days a week, cleared each morning during the store’s “freshness hour,” Brannon said. Otherwise, this food would go into the trash, Bi-Lo assistant manager Peter Darsey confirmed.
Subway donates about 300-500 foot-long sandwich rolls per week. Mike Short, a food bank volunteer who helps with distribution and drives a route to collect the rolls, said recipients often ask for them.
The Subway shops do not bake extra bread for the food bank, according to managers at two locations. Instead, an excess results from the unpredictability of sales. Managers want to have enough, but are supposed to keep the bread fresh. So after 12-13 hours, employees put the leftover bread into a freezer, said John Marsh, the general manager of Subway’s U.S. Highway 301 South location. Still frozen when Short picks it up, the bread goes to a freezer at the food bank.
Other restaurants, such as Olive Garden, sometimes contribute, and some also channel excess food into a separate effort called Feeding Statesboro.
Aimed at reducing both waste and hunger, the donations also give local charities leeway to decide who eats free. For its regular Monday through Friday distributions, Food Bank Inc. mostly uses items bought from a U.S. Department of Agriculture program. But with the USDA food comes income eligibility requirements, similar to those for the program popularly known as food stamps.
The USDA rules do not apply to food donated by restaurants and stores, Brannon explained. So the local organizations can, at their discretion, give this food to people who would not otherwise qualify. Still, most of those eating free are the working poor, Brannon said, while acknowledging that a few people undoubtedly “play the system.”
Much of the food given to the food bank goes to its Morning Outreach, held Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at a separate location on Olliff Street. Mondays are special. That’s when preapproved recipients line up for clamshell boxes packed with frozen foods for microwaving, including beef tips trimmed from LongHorn’s steaks.
The Morning Outreach reaches about 160 people per month and has a waiting list stretching to March.
Meanwhile, volunteers from five churches operate Feeding Statesboro, serving lunch to more than 100 people each Tuesday in the Jones-Love Cultural Center at Luetta Moore Park. Volunteers don’t ask diners for identification or income verification. But a basket on the sign-in table welcomes cash donations.
Here too, some of the food comes through Food Bank Inc., but businesses also give directly to Feeding Statesboro. Sugar Magnolia Bakery & Café donates leftover bread. Restaurants such as LongHorn give, too, and Walmart and Bi-Lo have made direct contributions. The owner of one restaurant that hasn’t opened yet, South & Vine, has already offered to donate, said the Rev. Joan Kilian, the pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church and vice president of Feeding Statesboro.
The group has a goal to expand to multiple days. Members also want a permanent location, Kilian said, and more freezer space – for donated food.
“That would help local restaurants,” she said. “We would be able to take the things that they can’t serve on a daily basis and then turn around and repurpose them and use them to good in this community.”