Old challenges, new location

SANDPOINT — It’s a far cry from picking up a pre-assembled box of foodstuffs to picking out your own groceries, which is why the Bonner Community Food Center made the shift this year to a format that looks and operates like a real market.

Customers wheel around shopping carts and select items from the baked goods section, the meat and dairy products departments and the bread aisle, as well as frozen foods and fresh fruit and vegetables in season.

The shift would not have been possible without moving the facility itself — a transition that took place last November at what is traditionally one of the busiest times in the food bank year. With the threat of snow just around the corner, executive director Alice Wallace and the rest of the staff conducted a power move over a long weekend. It took another several days to get the new digs in operating order.

By the time they got the doors open, Thanksgiving was staring them right in the face.

“We had 900 turkeys to get, along with all the fixings,” she said.

Apart from a shaky shakedown cruise, the food bank has thrived in its new location at 1707 Culvers Dr., near the Sandpoint Airport. At 4,600 square feet, the new building is 40 percent larger than the former N. Fifth Avenue site.

“But because of the layout, this seems at least twice as big as our old place,” Wallace said.

In the past, the food bank managed to work around a single delivery bay that was too narrow for a vehicle to back into. That meant the start of every workday involved firing up the forklift to jockey boxes of food around simply to create enough room for the staff to navigate the cramped storeroom.

With three full-sized bays that allow easy access to the market and two adjoining storage areas, the new site is now the picture of smooth workflow. With things improved behind the scenes, the food bank moved forward with plans to update the rest of the operations — most noticeably in the way customers receive their food.

Replacing the old format, where a fixed selection of products was rationed out in boxes based on household size, the food bank implemented a “shopping points” system where all items are assigned a certain number of points and shoppers could use their allotted monthly total at their own discretion.

“We had, for years, wanted to try something like that,” the executive director said. “It’s less work for us and it’s liberating for our clients. Instead of getting handed food boxes, they go through the market and they buy what their family wants to eat.”

To encourage healthy eating, the food bank marks fresh vegetables and nutritious foods at lower point ratings than things such as boxed dinners and sweets. After realizing that many lower-income families had no experience with cooking fresh food, the market began to offer free recipe ideas and tips to help them on their way.

All of these changes, however, haven’t managed to counterbalance the underlying reality that drives the need for a local food bank — and always has, according to Wallace. When her mother, Florence Carter, founded the food bank in 1980, some community members felt it was an unnecessary service. When Wallace took the reins in 1997, that sentiment was still in place.

“When my mom started this, people said, ‘What do we need that for? We don’t have any hungry people or homeless people here,’ ” she said, adding that similar comments can be heard today. “My response is: Really? Come by and visit us one of these days.

“We’re no different than we’ve ever been,” she continued. “We’re still an emergency system.”

This year, the facility is providing food for more than 4,300 clients each month — an increase of about 150 individuals a month, compared with 2011 figures. Virtually all of the items come into the organization through donations, both large and small. This time of year, local gardeners pull up to the place with bags full of homegrown produce or boxes of canned goods. Larger donations come from major retailers such as Walmart, which provided about $180,000 in goods last year as part of a corporate giving plan that benefits food banks around the country.

Yoke’s donations should top $100,000 for 2012, Wallace estimated, and additional items come from Pizza Hut, Winter Ridge, Safeway and Super 1.

“We have great community support,” she said. “All of the grocery stores are in.”

Even with regular donations of food and ongoing grant support, the food bank finds itself playing what now is an all-too-familiar game of catch-up — a situation that has been exacerbated by the delay of a $10,000 FEMA grant that normally would be in the bank by now. Add to that the erosion in corporate support at the local level and the math quickly slips into negative territory.

“People have been real good to the food bank, but right now, it’s getting a little thin,” said Wallace. “Donations are down — they’re way down.

“In June, we had 6,000 more pounds of food going out than we had coming in.”

This disparity sometimes results in empty shelves and angry calls from people who don’t understand how the food bank operates.

“I had a woman call and tell me she was upset because we didn’t have any bread when she stopped in,” Wallace said. “She asked me, ‘What’s the problem with you people? You are a bread store, aren’t you?’ I told her, no, we’re a food bank — and there’s not a guarantee that there will even be any food here when you come in. It all depends on donations.”

All the same, the organization tends to step up when the community is in need, as it did a few years ago when the food bank picked up the local Coats for Kids program. In March of this year, the food bank jumped in again by taking over the food backpack program that serves 155 Northside and Kootenai elementary school students from lower-income families. The program send these kids — all of whom are on free-and-reduced lunch programs and many of whom also eat breakfast at school — home on Fridays with a backpack filled with milk, cereal, dried fruit, energy bars and entrée meals. In a large number of cases, the kids are preparing these weekend meals on their own.

Just as with the food bank itself, Wallace said there are naysayers who decry the cost of the food, which requires an annual budget of $25,000, as well as hundreds of volunteer hours, to administer.

“It’s an expensive program, but the way things are these days, it’s a necessary program,” Wallace said.

Since taking over the distribution of the backpacks, the food bank has been successful in cutting more than 40 percent from expenses while also improving food selection and program safety by removing boxed foods that required children to boil water and large jars of food that made the packs too heavy for smaller kids.

“We were spending about $7 per student, per week, on the backpack food kits,” the executive director said. “Now we’re spending $4.”

Although she calls it a long shot, Wallace is encouraging area residents to take part in a regional program that could drum up a big chunk of financial support for the food bank. They can help, she said, by visiting www.facebook.com/parkertoyota and voting for Bonner Community Food Bank as their favorite charity. With two rounds of voting, the organizations with the most “likes” can earn an initial $250 and go into a second phase that has much more money at stake.

In the 1,100-square-foot market space, a few young mothers pass through the aisles with children in tow, as a couple of older clients do their shopping nearby. Warehouse foreman John Larrabee enters cheerfully, carrying boxes of cherries and plums and encouraging customers to stock up on fruits and veggies.

The food might be free, Wallace said, but the food bank is no free ride. The market isn’t set up to make it easy for those who want to work as little as possible. Clients must register for food stamps, which immediately makes them visible in a government program that requires recipients to be holding down a job or be out looking for one.

“If they say they don’t want to apply, we require that they bring in a pay stub to show that they’re working and trying to help themselves,” said Wallace. “I tell them, ‘You’ve got to help us if you want us to help you — we don’t have the wherewithal to be your grocery store.’ ”

For more information on the Bonner Community Food Center, visit: www.foodbank83864.com or call (208) 263-3663.