TEMPLE, Texas (KXXV) — “We can’t do this because any one person can do it,” said AC Brandt, director of Love of Christ Food Pantry.
AC Brandt is a retired educator who has been involved with Love of Christ Food Pantry for 17 years, first as a volunteer and then as director.
“It’s a group effort. Someone drives the trucks, someone manages the warehouse and the clothing room and stuff like that, because you can never do it alone,” Brandt said.
The week starts on Monday with the packing of fruits and vegetables, on Tuesday the bags are made and then the carts are assembled.
“We went from distributing 70 bags before to distributing 750 bags last week,” Brandt said.
This week marks 33 years since the food pantry began serving food to the community on Wednesdays and Thursdays, before returning to refill and start it all over again.
Brandt says what he likes best is the people, but he faces challenges in ensuring supply meets demand, which has led to the use of food rescue trucks.
“So what we’re doing is sourcing food that would normally be thrown away. One, food that comes in in more than we need, and two, food that’s expired but still good,” Brandt said.
Representatives of Operation Feeding Temple say the four food pantries they support don’t have annual fundraising goals, but are ready to help.
“Monetary donations greatly benefit the food pantry and purchasing power of the Central Texas Food Bank,” said Derrall Thompson, president of Operation Feeding Temple.
Love of Christ said it served 4,233 families in June.
“We distributed 106,925 pounds of food.”
Doing the math, he says the retail price comes to $446,675.
“Multiply that by 12 and you get a rough idea of how much food we’re distributing,” Brandt said.
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