Workers bundle up in sweatshirts at FreshPoint Raleigh, a wholesale distributor of fruits, vegetables and dairy products in Morrisville. They move pallets of produce in 17,000 square feet of refrigerated rooms for delivery to major hotels, hospitals, restaurants and nursing homes.
Despite the frigid working conditions, everyone seems pretty jovial. It could be because, along with earning a paycheck, they know they’re also helping to feed the hungry.
FreshPoint Raleigh is a regular contributor to The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. When the building opened four years ago, the company had to figure out what to do with boxes of leftover food from overshipments.
“We looked them up in the phone book and went from there,” said Chris Woodring, FreshPoint’s west coast commodity manager. “You don’t want to see good food go to waste — not when there’s people out there who can eat it.”
The FreshPoint warehouse, part of a corporation with 34 locations in the United States and Canada, also contributes fruit to the food bank’s Backpack Program, which supplies weekend meals for children who qualify for the free-lunch program.
“Sometimes they’ll come here, and sometimes we’ll take it to them,” said Woodring, 30, himself a father of two children. He said they had a donation of 30 cases of milk ready for the food bank that very day.
Children and the elderly make up about half of the food bank’s recipients, living in 34 counties and serviced from five warehouses in the central and eastern part of the state. Last year the food bank estimates it provided more than 32 million pounds of food, distributed by 900 nonprofit partners, to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, day care centers and elderly care programs.
“The food bank is a fantastic organization; I can’t say enough about them,” said Woodring, who said he’ll only donate food that’s in good condition. “Some people think of them as a dumping ground, but I don’t.”
Woodring, along with hundreds of other locals, will further contribute to feeding the hungry by participating in Saturday’s “Feed the Need” community event, co-sponsored by The News & Observer.
He’ll be at the Harris Teeter at Crescent Commons in Cary, selling the N&O’s “Feed the Need” special edition for $1 each — 75 cents of which goes directly to the food bank. For each dollar earned, the food bank can donate four meals.
Last year, the event drew more than 300 volunteers and sold 8,536 special editions, along with several thousands of additional monetary donations and pounds of food.
Woodring is glad to be a part of all the combined efforts to end local hunger.
“It feels great,” he said. “Whenever there’s needy people in the world and we can help with that, I’m happy to do it.”