Food Bank Boosted by Corporate Drive

The Food Distribution Center usually relies on manufacturer mistakes to help feed some of the estimated 400,000 Orange County residents who face hunger each month.

This summer, the food bank’s directors asked company employees to give on their own by launching the first corporate food drive in the center’s 11-year history. About 36,000 pounds of food have come in since June 1, and the center anticipates reaching 50,000 when some large corporations hold drives in July and August.

Food from the drive will make about 72,000 meals and raise awareness of hunger in wealthy Orange County, center officials said.

“This is much more successful than what we had envisioned,” said David G. Coffaro, chairman of the corporate drive. “About 25,000 employees had the chance to participate and now another 25,000 people in the county are aware of the issue.” About 50 companies, most of them new to food drives, participated, he said.

The charitable agencies that distribute the food reach about 180,000 people a month, said Fred Pratt, the center’s director. But the need is far from solved.

“You wouldn’t expect that 16% of the population in Orange County is at risk of going to bed hungry,” said Dan Harney, executive director of the food bank. “That should be totally unacceptable.”

The overall affluence of the county masks much of the want, but studies have pinpointed many pockets of poverty, Harney said.

The center’s statistics show that children make up 42% of the county’s hungry and another 18% are senior citizens. “You’ve got to get away from the image of the homeless and the lazy guy who won’t work,” Harney said.

The center opened in 1983 in one room of a warehouse on Almond Avenue in Orange and distributed about $50,000 worth of food to charitable agencies.

Now Pratt can lead a tour of a facility that spreads over two floors and includes two refrigerated rooms, a walk-in freezer, stack after stack of cans, boxes and jars and a virtual mountain of disposable diapers.

Thousands of volunteers help process about $13 million worth of food and other items a year. If they were employees, the payroll would be about $1 million annually, Pratt said.

As a member of the national Second Harvest Network, the center receives truckloads of manufacturer overproductions and discards.

“Ninety-nine percent of what we do is because somebody goofed,” Pratt said.

When an operator at Laura Scudders pulled the wrong lever, Orange County got 20,000 pounds of cashew-filled peanut butter. And when a toy packed in Cap’n Crunch cereal turned out to be dangerous, 23,000 pounds of the cereal--39 truckloads--came into the Almond Avenue warehouse. Volunteers still are opening the bags, pulling out the toys and resealing the bags.

It is tedious work but well worth it, said Anaheim Hills resident Becky Swank, who volunteers at the bank twice a week.

“Probably the hardest part is making yourself come down and do it,” she said. “But once you’re here, you get a second wind. It’s something to give back. I’ve been blessed, and I feel that our county has gotten away from that: giving back to people.”