Feeding Tampa Bay took over the feeding of Manatee County’s needy in July. Is it working?
When Feeding Tampa Bay ended its distribution partnership with the Food Bank of Manatee on July 1, the organization acknowledged it might take some time to rally the local organizations that run food pantries and serve meals to the needy and homeless.
The transition spawned worry and concern from those local agencies that the needs of their community would suffer during the transition. But so far, there have been no known complaints.
About two and a half months into FTB’s new role in Manatee County, about a third of those local agencies are receiving what FTB promised in the form of not only more food, but also much-desired fresh produce.
On Thursday, FTB delivered its latest supply to the Salvation Army of Manatee County, but didn’t stop there. Through a grant from the Walmart Community Foundation, FTB also delivered a new storage refrigerator, a pallet jack to unload delivery trucks and a pallet scale that weighs food and also serves as a ramp.
Head cook Tom Giglio said the Salvation Army is receiving significantly more food now, so the new refrigerator was both needed and appreciated.
“Since July 1, we are receiving about a truck a week,” Giglio said. “We aren’t necessarily feeding more people but are able to offer more options, healthy options, which helps tremendously.”
Jaci Peters, FTB communications manager, said FTB has connected with about a third of the local agencies.
“Each one is different and has their own specific needs,” Peters said. “We are in communication and developing a strategy with several other agencies, but what we won’t do is push a bunch of food on them they don’t need or want. We want to make sure each partner agency receives exactly what they need to fulfill their individual missions.”
Peters said, for example, Salvation Army receives a lot of bulk food items because they serve daily meals. It wouldn’t be the same for a church food pantry that hands out weekly, biweekly or monthly boxes of food.
Each agency purchases their product from the distributor of their choice and local agencies still can use the Food Bank of Manatee if they so desire. Giglio said the FTB product is more and fresher, “at a comparable rate.”
FTB continues free delivery through the end of the year to help local agencies make the transition, but Peters said the ultimate success of the new business plan is to connect partner agencies directly to local donor grocery stores. Peters said those stores have always had a contract with FTB, but it used to be the Food Bank of Manatee that picked up the product and distributed it to local agencies.
Now the plan is to streamline that distribution even further with direct pick-up opportunity.
“Right now we feel pretty good about the process,” Peters said. “We’ve delivered 264,000 pounds into Manatee County in two months. “We are directly in touch with about a third of the local agencies and more are calling.”
In June, Maribeth Phillips, Food Bank of Manatee president and CEO, put out a call to action for the community to continue to support the food bank’s mission of providing product to local agencies and would continue to operate the primary program of Meals on Wheels Plus.
Phillips could not be reached for comment Friday.