Many hands make the ‘magic’ of stocking food bank shelves

Joe Sanchez, volunteer driver

You can’t blame Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH clients who behold the selection of staples, drinks and snacks on the food bank shelves and imagine it appears by magic.

They are not exactly wrong.

But there are no food fairies tapping their wands to make provisions appear; the magic is in the army of volunteers who select, order, purchase, truck, weigh, sort and stock every item in the building.

There’s also magic in the donations of individuals, organizations and businesses who, like the volunteers, power the GHP FISH motto: Neighbors Helping Neighbors.

Joe Sanchez, a retired Realtor and one of our more than 300 volunteers, is one of the drivers who take the GHP FISH box truck out to local grocery stores to collect pallets of goods for the food bank.

“A lot of people are under the impression that all the food we get is donated, and that’s not really the case,” Joe says. About 30 percent of the products on our shelves are purchased with donated funds to supplement the generous Grocery Rescue donations from local stores.

Joe serves on the food bank’s purchasing committee, along with volunteers Geoff Perry, Laurie Rossnagel and operations manager Bill Mumford. They monitor FISH’s food supply, scout out bargains and place orders for pickup. Then Joe and his fellow truck drivers head to market.

A typical pickup nets four to six pallets of various items and costs $2,000 to $4,000, Joe says. The committee is making smaller but more frequent purchases now to keep abreast of immediate needs, he explains.

GHP FISH regularly buys from Winco, Fred Meyer, Dollar Tree and Costco, going where the best deals are and getting the biggest bang for every donated buck.

Sometimes other customers pitch in, too.

Joe remembers purchasing 128 loaves of bread one day at Costco. His overflowing cart caught the attention of a customer in front of him in the checkout line, who asked what that was all about. Joe explained he was buying the bread for the GHP FISH food bank.

When he got to the cashier, the other customer whipped out his own credit card and paid for the purchase, as a gift.

A different team of drivers, led by transportation coordinator Bruce Harjehausen, ventures out to collect donated food from Fred Meyer, Safeway, Metropolitan Market, Target and Costco, as well as several donation bins located in local businesses and post offices. They also regularly collect provisions from the Emergency Food Network, a nonprofit warehouse supplying a web of local community agencies throughout Pierce County and from Pet Food Experts,both in Tacoma.

“Currently, we have 26 drivers,” Bruce said. “Fifteen of those have a scheduled route; the others are substitutes as needed.” Most donate the use of their own vehicles and gas.

Once the driver backs up to the food bank loading dock, the volunteer crew of dockworkers swarms the truck and offloads the shipment in minutes. If a delivered item is sorely needed on the food shelves, the time from truck to shelf can be measured in minutes.

Then the volunteer shoppers help their food bank clients select fresh produce, canned goods, dairy and meat products to feed their families.

Last year, all that work paid off: GHP FISH provided $1.3 million in meals, while serving 25,636 individuals.