HPR4288: God's Pantry Food Bank

Hacker Public Radio

This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host.

Greetings and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.

My name is Peter Paterson, also known as SolusSpider, a Scotsman living in Kentucky, USA.

This is my second HPR recording.

The first was episode 4258 where I gave my introduction and computer history.

Once again I am recording the audio on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, running Android 14, with Audio Recorder by Axet. The app was installed from F-Droid.

Markdown

For my Shownotes I learned to use Markdown by using the ReText app, which allows me to write in one window and preview the result in another.

What is this show about?

When I visited Archer72, AKA Mark Rice, in November 2024 in his University of Kentucky trauma room I reminded him that I work for God's Pantry Food Bank.

He said he wanted to hear more, and highly suggested that I record the story as an HPR show, so here we are.

I plan to ask the questions I hear from so many, and attempt to answer them as best I am able.

What is the History of God's Pantry Food Bank?

Reading directly from the About-Us page of Godspantry.org

Mim Hunt, the founder of God’s Pantry Food Bank, vowed to leave “the heartbreaking profession of social work� behind when she returned to her hometown of Lexington after serving as a child welfare worker in 1940’s New York City. She and her husband, Robert, opened “Mim’s,� a combination gift shop, antique gallery, and health food store, but after seeing poverty in Lexington that rivaled what she’d fought against in New York, she found herself unable to remain silent.

Mim began her work in Lexington by filling her station wagon with food, clothing, and bedding, and distributing it directly to individuals in need.

Soon, neighbors were bringing food donations to what became known as “Mim’s Pantry� located at her home on Lexington’s Parkers Mill Road. But Mim quickly corrected them. “I don’t fill these shelves,� she said. “God does. This is God’s Pantry.� God’s Pantry Food Bank was born out of this work in 1955 and remained mobile until the first pantry was opened in 1959.

Since its founding, the food bank has grown in many ways. What started with one woman attempting to do what she could to address a need is now an organization serving 50 counties in Central and Eastern Kentucky through a number of programs with a dedicated staff committed to the mission of solving hunger.

Mim Hunt devoted her life to helping others, and we continue to honor her legacy at God’s Pantry Food Bank. Her work is proof that one person, with every small action, can make a large impact. We invite you to join us in continuing Mim’s work.

Where have been the locations of the main Food Bank facility?

My ex-workmate Robert Srodulski recently wrote a reply in Facebook when our newest building was announced.

He stated:

"If I count right, this is the 6th main warehouse location in Lexington. Congratulations!

>

• Mim’s house and car

• Oldham Avenue garage

• A building next to Rupp Arena (which is now gone)

• Forbes Road

• Jaggie Fox Way,

• Innovation Drive."

My friend Robert was employed by the Food Bank for 26 years. I am chasing his time as the longest lasting male employee.

Two ladies have longer service times:

• Debbie Amburgey with 36.5 years in our Prestonsburg facility. She started on 19th October 1987. Sadly my good friend Debbie passed earlier this year, and I miss her greatly. She never retired.

• Danielle Bozarth with currently just under 30 years. She started on 30th May 1995.

It would take me just over 11 years to catch up with Debbie's service record, which would take me to the age of 68. Unsure if I shall still be employed by then!

What exactly do I mean by Food Bank?

In February 2023 I wrote a blog post with my explanation of Food Bank. My website is LinuxSpider.net, and you will find the direct link in the shownotes.

The blog was written as a response to friends, mostly from the United Kingdom, asking me very this question.

To many there, and indeed here in USA also, what is called a Food Bank is what I call a local Food Pantry. Nobody is wrong here at all. We all gather food from various sources and distribute it to our neighbours who are in food insecure need.

Most Pantries are totally staffed by volunteers and often open limited hours.

The Food Bank has a larger scope in where we source food from, the amount sourced, does have paid staff but still dependent on volunteers, and we are open at least 40 hours a week. More if you include projects that involve evenings and Saturdays.

God's Pantry Food Bank has a service area which includes 50 of the 120 Counties of Kentucky, covering central, southern, and eastern, including part of Appalachia.

When I started in 1999 we were distributing 6 million pounds weight of food per year. This is about 150 semi-truckloads. Over 25 years later we are looking at distributing about 50 million pounds this year, about 1,250 truckloads.

Over 40% of our distribution is fresh produce.

We are an hunger relief organisation, so this amount of food is assisting our neighbours in need.

In those 50 Counties we have about 400 partner agencies. Many of these agencies are Soup Kitchens, Children's Programs, Senior Programs, as well as Food Pantries.

God's Pantry Food Bank is partnered with the Feeding America network of 198 Food Banks.

In my early years I knew them as America's Second Harvest. In 2008 they changed name to Feeding America. Their website is FeedingAmerica.org

What they do is outlined in their our-work page, including:

• Ensuring everyone can get the food they need with respect and dignity.

• Advocating for policies that improve food security for everyone.

• Partnering to address the root causes of food insecurity, like the high cost of living and lack of access to affordable housing.

• Working with local food banks and meal programs.

• Ending hunger through Food Access, Food Rescue, Disaster Response, and Hunger Research.

I have visited a few other Food Banks, but not as many as I would have liked. We all have our own areas of service, but do often interact as the needs arise, especially in times of disaster.

The Feeding America network came to Kentucky's aid in the past few years with the flooding in the East and tornadoes in the West.

Feeding America aided the Food Banks affected by the devastation from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

How did I get started at the Food Bank?

As mentioned in my introduction show I moved from Scotland to Kentucky in May 1999 and married Arianna in June 1999.

Before our wedding I had received my green card. My future Mother-in-Law Eva recommended I check with God's Pantry Food Bank to see if they were hiring.

She was working for Big Lots and had applied for a warehouse job at the Food Bank. Unfortunately for her she never got the job, but she was quite impressed by the organisation. She knew that I had warehouse and driving experience.

So, one day after dropping Arianna at her University of Kentucky Medical Staff Office I stopped by the Food Bank on South Forbes Road to ask.

The answer was that they were indeed hiring for the warehouse, and to come back that afternoon to meet with CW Drury, the Warehouse Manager. I drove home, put on smarter clothes, and drove back.

It was a pleasure meeting CW and hearing about the job. Although most of the explanation of what they did in their mission went over my head at the time, I knew needed a job, and wanted to join this company.

A few days before our wedding I received a phone call from CW offering me the position. I accepted and went for my medical the next day.

My first day with God's Pantry Food Bank was on Tuesday 6th July 1999, the day after our honeymoon.

I will admit that although my previous job in Scotland was a physical one, quite a few months had passed, and the heat was hot that Summer in Kentucky! I went home exhausted everyday, but totally enjoying the work I was doing.

I started off mostly picking orders, assisting Agencies that came in, going to the local Kroger supermarkets to pick up bread, deliver and pick up food barrels of donations, and all the other duties CW assigned me to.

I particularly enjoyed the software part of the job. I forget the name of the software back then, but do remember learning the 10 digit Item Codes.

• 1st is the source

• 2nd and 3rd are the category. There are 31 officially with Feeding America.

• next 6 is the unique UPC - usually from the item bar code

• 10th is the storage code of dry, cooler, or freezer

The first code I memorised was Bread Products: 1040010731

This broke down to Donated, Bread Category, UPC number, and Dry Storage.

I must admit we did not create a new code when we started storing Bread Product in the Cooler. That is probably the only exception

It has been my responsibility all these years to maintain the Item Category Code sheet with different codings we have used and had to invent.

An example is that when the source digit had already used 1 to 9, we had to start using letters. Although there were concerns at the time, everything worked out well.

When I started at South Forbes Road there were 11 employees there and Debbie in Prestonsburg. 12 in total, in 2 locations.

These days we have over 80 employees in 5 locations: Lexington, Prestonsburg, London, Morehead, and a Volunteer Center on Winchester Road, Lexington, near the Smuckers JIF Peanut Butter plant.

My time at 104 South Forbes Road was for a full 4 weeks!

In August 1999 we moved to 1685 Jaggie Fox Way, into a customised warehouse with 3 pallet tall racking, and lots of office space. It felt so large back then!

On my first couple of days of unloading trucks there I totally wore out a pair of trainers!!

Jaggie Fox does sound like a strange name for a street, but I later learned it came from 2 ladies, Mrs Jaggie and Mrs Fox who owned the land before the business park purchase. Anyway, that's what I have been told by mulitple people.

Technology was fun in 1999, as we had a 56K phone modem, about 10 computers, and 1 printer. You can imagine the shared internet speed.

I forget how long, but we eventually got DSL, then Cable.

What have been my duties at the Food Bank?

For my first decade of employment I worked the warehouse and as a driver.

This included delivering food to the 4 to 5 local pantries that we ran ourselves in local church buildings in Fayette County.

Funny story is that a couple of years into the job, I was approached by the Development Manager and asked if I knew websites and HTML. I informed her that I was familiar, and she made me responsible for the maintenance of the website that University of Kentucky students had created. It indeed was quite basic with only HTML and images.

I had this duty for a few years before a professional company was hired.

I mentioned Inventory software. In early 2000 we moved to an ERP, that is an Enterprise Resource Planning suite named Navision written by a Danish company. That company was then taken over by Microsoft. For as while it was called Microsoft NAV, and these days it is part of Dynamics 365.

Feeding America commissioned a module named CERES which assisted us non-profits to use profit orientated software. Inhouse, we just call the software CERES.

Even though I was no longer maintaining the website, I was still involved in IT to a degree. I became the inhouse guy who would set up new employees with their own computer. Ah, the days of Active Directory. I never did like it!

I was also the guy the staff came to first with their computer problems. Funny how a lot of these issues were fixed when I walked in their office. If I could not fix an issue there and then, we did have a contract company on-call.

They maintained our server and other high level software.

This was still when I was in the warehouse role.

After that first decade I was allocated to be our Welcome Center person, which I did for 3 years.

This involved welcoming agencies, guests, salespersons, volunteers, and assisting other staff members in many ways.

I also went from being a driver to the person who handed out delivery and pick-up routes to the drivers.

During these years I became a heavy user of CERES working with the agencies and printing out pick-sheets to our warehouse picking staff.

Although I really enjoyed the work, I will openly admit that I am not always the best in heavily social situations. I did have some difficulty when the Welcome Center was full of people needing my attention and I was trying to get software and paperwork duties done. Somehow I survived!

My next stage of employment was moving into the offices and becoming the assistant to the Operations Director.

This is when I really took on the role of food purchaser, ordering fresh produce and food from vendors as part of our budget.

I also took over the responsibility of bidding for food donations from the Feeding America portal named Choice. National Donors offer truckloads of food and other items to the network, and we Food Banks bid on them in an allocated share system. The donations are free, but we pay for the truck freight from the shipping locations.

A full time IT person was hired. We are now on our 4th IT Manager. The last 2 each had assistants.

Although I am grandfathered in as an admin, my duties in this regard are very low, but still have the abity to install software as needed. Quite handy on my own laptop.

As well as being the Food Procurement Officer I also became the Reporting Officer.

This has been greatly aided by our team receiving the ability to write our own reports from the Navision SQL database using Jet Reporting.

This is an Excel extension that allows us to access field data not directly obtainable in the CERES program.

The fore-mentioned Robert Srodulski used to spend a day creating a monthly report that included all of our 50 counties across multiple categories of data. He would step by step complete an Excel worksheet with all this information.

I took his spreadsheet, converted it into a Jet Report, and it now runs in about 5 minutes!

It is my responsibility to supply reports on a regular monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to my Directors, fellow staff, and to Feeding America.

Yes, I do have an orange mug on my desk that says "I submitted my MPR". That is the Monthly Pulse Report. It sits next to my red swingline stapler!

What are God's Pantry Food Bank's sources of food?

This is probably the question I get asked the most when friends and online contacts find out what I do for a career.

We receive and obtain food from various sources, including:

• Local donations from people like you. Thank you!

• Local farmers.

• Local retail companies and other businesses giving food directly to us and to our Partner Agencies. We are the official food charity of many retailers, including Walmart and Kroger.

• National Companies, mostly through the Feeding America Choice Program.

• The USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, supplies us with multiple programs of food: TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program), CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation), and CSFP (Commodity Supplemental Food Program).

• Purchased food, including Fresh Produce, via donations and grants.

Without all this food coming in, we would not be able to distribute to our internal programs or to our partner agencies, allowing them to run Backpacks for Kids, Food Boxes for Seniors, Food Pantries, Mobile Distributions, Sharing Thanksgiving, and a multitude of other services we offer our neighbours.

We have a team of Food Sourcers that work directly with the retail companies, so I am not fully involved there, but I am the main Food Purchaser for the majority of the food we buy. Specialised internal programs like Backpack and local Pantries do order specific foods that they need on a regular basis. I try to supply for the long term.

With the USDA CSFP program I am responsible for the ordering of that food through a Government website. Often 6 to 12 months ahead of time.

Here's a truth that staggers many people when I inform them:

If you are spending cash on food donations to God's Pantry Food Bank, the most efficient use of those funds is to donate it to us.

I truly can obtain about $10 worth of food for every $1 given.

An example is that I recently obtained a full truckload donation of 40,000lb of Canned Sliced Beets (yum!) that we are paying only freight on.

Do the maths.

#Where is God's Pantry Food Bank located?

As mentioned we have 5 locations, not including our own local pantries, but our main head office is at 2201 Innovation Drive

Please check out our webpage at GodsPantry.org/2201innovationdrive as it includes an excellent animated walk-through tour of the offices and warehouse, including the Produce Cooler, Deli Cooler, and Freezer. They are massive!

I personally waited until the very last day, Friday 13th of December, to move out of my Jaggie Fox office and into my new one at Innovation. Our official first day was on Monday 16th December 2024.

What I tooted and posted on that Friday caught the eye of my CEO, Michael Halligan, and he asked me if he could share it with others. Of course he should!

In the Shownotes I have included a link to my Mastodon toot. It's too long a number to read out.

I am absolutely loving our new location.

It's my challenge to fill the cooler, freezer, and dry warehouse with donated food!

My new office is 97% set up to my workflow, including my infamous hanging report boards, and spiders everywhere.

The last line of my blog says:

All that said, it truly is the only job I have ever had which I absolutely enjoy, but totally wish did not exist!!

This remains true.

Our mission is:

Reducing hunger by working together to feed Kentucky communities.

Our vision is:

A nourished life for every Kentuckian.

#How may HPR listeners support God's Pantry Food Bank

The quick answer is to go to our website of GodsPantry.org and click on Take Action.

From there you will be given a list to choose from:

• Donate Food

• Volunteer

• Host a Food Drive or Fundraiser

• Become a Partner

• Attend an Event

• Advocate

• Other Ways to Help

Thank you so much for listening to my HPR show on God's Pantry Food Bank.

Apart from leaving a comment on the HPR show page, the easiest ways for people to contact me are via Telegram: at t.me/solusspider or Mastodon at @[e-mail]

I look forward to hearing from you.

Now go forth, be there for your fellow neighbours, and record your own HPR show!

…

Adding this comment to the Shownotes, that I shall not be speaking aloud.

Although I consider this show topic to be Clean, as it is basically about my life and work, not my beliefs, there may be some worldwide who hear the name God's Pantry

and consider it to be religious. Therefore I am flagging the show as Explicit. just in case.

It is merely the name of our non-profit Food Bank, as called by our founder Mim Hunt.

Although the majority of our Partner Agencies are faith based non-profit organisations, the Food Bank itself is not faith based.

…

Provide feedback on this episode.