How does the donation process work?
Whatever cold food is left over on Saturday nights and they take it to the shelter and they drop it off in front of the building.
What shelter do you donate to?
Thurman Brisben Center.
What have you donated?
Cold food and we have donated nugget trays
What have they accepted?
They have taken everything.
How long has Chick-Fil-A been doing this?
Not sure, but since she has been an employee there which has been about 6-7 years.
What is your protocol for unused/leftover food?
Any dry foods, as long as they are edible, are donated to the fredericksburg food bank
Products that are not eligible for food donation are donated via the Organic Recycling program. This program started in 2011.
In 2015, 35.1 million pounds of organic waste was diverted through the Organic Recycling program
From January through September of 2016, 646,000 pounds of food has been diverted from landfills to the organic recycling.
Products from the meat and seafood department that cannot be donated are recycled for some makeup products.
Fryer oil and oven grease is recovered and recycled.
Tell me about the Thanksgiving pie donation program that is currently going on.
For $3.99+tax, pies and proceeds can be donated to the Fredericksburg Area Food Bank.
This is something that Giant does every year.
They currently have 50 cases of pumpkin pies to donate to the Fredericksburg Area Food Bank. The pies are donated frozen so that any extras can be used at a later date.
Last Tuesday, Giant donated 1,000 turkeys to the food bank.
What is the protocol when donating food?
As long as there are no holes, food is donated.
The food bank has a sorting area where people will go through all of the delivered food. This is where they will see if the donated food is safe to be used in the food bank or not.
Foods that are out of date and cannot be sold in store are donated.
Typically, manufacturing dates give a shorter lifespan for the food to ensure that customers are getting fresher food. Foods such as salad dressings can go longer than the dates printed on them. The food bank has charts for the foods to see how much longer they are edible.
Foods that have reached their sell by date are also donated unless the manufacturers take them back to receive credit.
Do you think that this is a beneficial process?
Yes
What do you think the main issue is in the community regarding homelessness?
A lack of decent paying jobs.
There is a difference between minimum wage and living wage, and she does not believe that the wages have caught up with the population increase in the area. Some people still consider it a rural location despite all of the development in the recent years.
There is a need for better paying jobs in the area.
Additional comments:
They love working with the community, they see the need for it and have tried harder to increase their donations as a result.
There has been a long partnership between the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank and Giant.
They have in house plastic bag recycling.
They have in house donation bins year round for the food bank.
People in the area give back frequently without hesitation.
She was recently transferred to this location and at her previous one, they would make Thanksgiving dinner bags and take them into the local schools. Children whose families needed a meal were able to receive a bag.
In the White Oak location, they partner with Rikki’s Refuge in Orange County, Va, a farm that houses unwanted and abandoned animals and that Giant donates unused food as well as cloth, cleaner, etc. for the farm.
