For the 19th year, United Supermarkets stepped up and donated roughly 19,440 fresh apples to the High Plains Food Bank on Friday morning, April 17.
According to Travis Chaney, regional vice president of The United Family, “We are donating 6,480 pounds of Opal organic yellow apples through our partnership with HPFB in our Take a Bite Out of Hunger campaign.
“We’ve done this 16 years … it’s through a partnership with First Fruits out of Washington,” he said.
Chaney explained that when people purchase apples during a certain time frame during the year, they have displays up in United’s stores that encourage people to buy them and a portion of the purchase is given back to food banks as a donation.
“We want to help the community as much as we can,” he said. “This is just another way to do that.”
Zack Wilson, the food bank’s executive director, said they serve about 14,000 households a month, so that translates to around 4,000 households a week that receive food.
“These apples won’t be here very long,” he said. “They will go out the door as quickly as early next week, especially when our partners who we distribute food to find out that we have fresh produce.” He said the fruit was a highly requested item for the food pantry.
Wilson said that the current need is the highest it’s ever been in their history — even surpassing the period of COVID and 2008 when the financial bubble caused a recession.
“We want to be able to step up and try to help fulfill, not only with non-perishable food items, but also with fresh produce,” he said. “We have seen a decrease in food donations and monetary donations.”
Wilson said that with the USDA food channel down, it wasn’t the kind of curve they like to see. “We have some really cool things going on, like this weekend, the Scouting for Food Drive is coming up.”
Along with the apple delivery this week, the food bank received half a truckload of milk donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Thursday, April 16 to help nourish their neighbors across the Texas Panhandle.
How you can help during Scouting for Food
Hundreds of young scouts will be canvassing Amarillo neighborhoods on Saturday morning, April 18 to collect donations during the annual door-to-door, Scouting for Food program. The most needed items include peanut butter, pasta/sauce, boxed dinners and canned items including soups, fruits, vegetables and meats, according to the HPFB.
Participants can deliver food or monetary donations to the HPFB warehouse, located at 815 Ross, on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pull up to the dock for help unloading and let them know your donations are for “Scouting for Food.” Scouts and volunteers will accept food and funds at the HPFB warehouse dock from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday.
Additionally, the need for more food goes up in the summer due to school being out. “You have kids that may have had access to free or reduced breakfast or lunch, and they don’t have that in summer so we’ve worked to grow our summer feeding program to various parks, apartment complexes and even other towns, like the City of Canyon,” Wilson said.
The donation this year throughout all the United stores was more than 50,000 pounds of apples, and over the past 16 years, it’s been 600,000 pounds United has been able to donate through the program, according to Chaney.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: United Family gives 6,480 pounds of apples to High Plains Food Bank
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
