I said recently it seems like it is raining food, great healthy food. Carol constantly reaches out to possible new donors. We have recently upped our game from grocery stores, warehouses, and the food bank by adding catering operations, restaurants, and chef created meals. This is providing so much more variety and all kinds of options to those who don’t cook much.
We welcomed PEJ Events Catering a few months ago, folowed by 2 of their storefront operatons at Pok-e-Joe’s supplying us with meats, sides and BBQ plates each week.
In March we were able to add meals and a variety of sides from Cook Unity. We became acquainted with them when they stepped up to donate meals during our recent Austin freeze. Of course both of these donors are sending food in aluminum pans too, for us to portion so we are doing a bit of the work to get them ready for the pantry. It is such a blessing to pick up the 100s of pounds of food each week to share.
SxSW brought us another donor, a repeat from last year, Austin Blessings Co-op. Carols Kindness was 1 of 15 non-profit organizations to recieve part of 3000 bags of non-perishable items to serve vulnerable neighbors in and around Austin. The bags had canned food, random snacks, water, juice, crackers, pasta and cereal. This certainly filled our shelves and beyond for a few weeks. I love the pictures on their site getting the bags ready to go.
In the beginning, we were just getting salvage from grocery stores and helping to sort food at another pantry and getting their leftovers to take and offer to the community. Carol got a couple of tips on other places where we could get food, and we picked up two warehouses, one is a regular donor, and the other we get intermittently. She has been able to reach out to a couple of organizations that serve as an interface for restaurant food too, netting us donations from Pizza hut and McDonald’s.
Thanks to our many donors: #sproutsfarmersmarket, #target,#specs, #costco, #pizzahut, #loveservefeed, #CentralTexasFoodBank, #LoneStarFamily, #McDonalds , #CookUnity #CanteenSnackandCoffee, #PeJEvents, #Pok-e-Joes https://pokejos.com/parmer-lane-restaurant/ and all the people in the community who support us with donations of food and $$.
We like to say that Carol’s Kindness is Oh So Kind. We hear this a lot.
Until next week we are putting the little truck to rest.