RICHMOND, Va. – Remember when it was hard to find toilet paper at the nearest grocery store? The beginning of mandated social distancing and mask wearing due to the coronavirus pandemic led to raids on supermarket shelves for bread, milk and toiletries.
The bare shelves sent those in need to local food banks and pantries to get food for their families. FeedMore President and CEO Doug Pick said FeedMore received a sharp increase in calls for need as grocery stores began to run out of stock.
“Prior to April we were serving about 161,000 folks,” Pick said. “As soon as April, May hit we were serving 241,000.”
Pick said FeedMore primarily buys B-stock food from producers and grocers, with only 5% of their food supplies coming from individual donations. When the grocery stores ran out of stock, they didn’t have much food to give food banks like FeedMore, according to Pick.
“The supply chains really got creamed on that,” Pick said. “We had to do a lot more food out of our own warehouse.”
Still, Pick says FeedMore never ran out of food for those who needed it, even when other food banks needed help replenishing their supplies.
“We never, ever missed a beat,” Pick said.
FeedMore operates as a food distributor rather than a community pantry. Their main goal is to manage the supply chain connecting food banks and food pantries around the state of Virginia, according to Pick.
One of the community pantries FeedMore supports is the Red Door Ministry at Grace & Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA. The Red Door Ministry operates a community kitchen on Fridays serving the hungry in the Monroe Park area, according to their website.
Grace & Holy Trinity Episcopal’s Priest for Campus Ministry and Pastoral Care The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz, who oversees The Red Door Ministry, said FeedMore helped them keep a stock of food for the community kitchen. Since The Red Door Ministry is a community kitchen, they can purchase food from FeedMore at a reduced cost, according to Reinholz.
“If they have snack type items – bags of chips, cookies, anything like that – we buy them from FeedMore because it’s so much cheaper than buying them wholesale or retail,” Reinholz said.
Reinholz said, just like FeedMore, The Red Door Ministry has never had to turn someone away during the pandemic, not even during the initial shutdown back in Spring 2020.
“There were three Fridays when we provided gift cards to people because we weren’t going to be physically there,” Reinholz said. “We never missed a meal.”
On average, The Red Door Ministry feeds 75-120 people each week, according to Reinholz. Meals are now distributed in plastic bags in a grab-and-go fashion to allow for social distancing.
“It is kind of a miracle,” Reinholz said.
Pick attributed FeedMore’s success to their volunteers and staff’s planning and execution. Pick said FeedMore was initially warned of a predicted surge of the coronavirus by Virginia Commonwealth University Health in March 2020.
“I’m real proud of the team and what they did,” Pick said. “This team has really stepped up to the plate and been everything we hoped we could be.”
One of the volunteers at FeedMore is Catherine Schivitz, who said she came to Richmond to attend a graduate studies certificate program at VCU. She said she usually works in the kitchen during her volunteering sessions but typically doesn’t chop vegetables.
“I think people were scared to get out and volunteer,” Schivitz said, referring to the public fear at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “I was like ‘Why not?’ ‘My community needs help.’”
Schivitz said she intends to continue volunteering at FeedMore throughout the pandemic.
“I’ll probably be here until I move out of Richmond,” Schivitz said.
Pick said he knows the pandemic isn’t over yet; FeedMore will need to continue to plan, coordinate and stockpile goods in order to keep operating at peak efficiency.
“We’re ready for the next one,” Pick said. “There’s always a disaster or crisis around the corner, and food banks being here for times of emergency.”
Two final words of confidence from Pick: “We’re ready.”
