hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4288.txt

Episode: 4288
Title: HPR4288: God's Pantry Food Bank
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4288/hpr4288.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:30:31

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4288 for Wednesday 8 January 2025.
Today's show is entitled, God's Pantry Food Bank.
It is hosted by Salus Spider and is about 26 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, questions and answers on what is a food bank and my 25-year career.
Greetings and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Peter Patterson, also known as Salus Spider, a Scotsman living in Kentucky
USA.
This is my second HPR recording.
The first was Episode 4258, where I gave my introduction in computer history.
Once again I am recording the audio on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, running Android
14 with audio recorder by AXET.
The app was installed from F-Droid.
For my show notes I learned to use Markdown by using the re-text app which allows me to
write in one window and preview the result in another.
What is this show about?
When I visited Archer 72, aka Mark Rice in November 2024 and his University of Kentucky
trauma room, I reminded him that I worked for God's Pantry Food Bank.
He said he wanted to hear more and highly suggested that I record the story as an HPR show
so here we are, I plan to ask the questions I hear from so many and attempt to answer them
as best I am able.
What is the history of God's Pantry Food Bank?
Read indirectly from the about us page of God's Pantry.org.
Mem Hunt, the founder of God's Pantry Food Bank, vowed to leave the heartbreaking profession
of social work behind when she returned to her hometown of Lexington after serving
as a child's welfare of worker in 1940's New York City.
She and her husband Robert opened Mem's, a combination gift shop, antique gallery and
health food store.
But after seeing poverty in Lexington on rivals which she fought against in New York, she found
herself unable to remain silent.
Mem began her work in Lexington by filling her station wagon with food, clothing and
bedding, and distributing it directly to individuals in need.
Soon neighbors were bringing food donations to what became known as Mem's Pantry, located
at her home in Lexington's parking mill road, but Mem quickly corrected them.
I don't feel these shelves, she said, God does.
This is God's Pantry.
God's Pantry Food Bank was born out of this work in 1955 and remained mobile into the
first pantry was opened in 1959.
Since its founding the Food Bank has grown in so many ways, was started with one woman attempting
to do what she could to address a need, is now an organization serving 50 counties in
central and eastern Kentucky.
To a number of programs, with dedicated staff committed to the mission of solving hunger,
Mem had devoted her life to helping others, and we continue to honour her legacy at God's
Pantry Food Bank, her work has proved that one person, with every small action, came
like a large impact, we invite you to join us and continue Mem's work.
Here have been the locations of the main Food Bank facility.
My ex-workmate Robert Shodolsky recently wrote a reply in Facebook when a newest building
was announced, he stated, if I count right, this is the six main warehouse location in
Lexington, congratulations.
The six being, Mem's house and car, old and avenue garage, a building next to Rapparina
which is now gone, Forbes Road, Jaggy Foxway and Innovation Drive.
My friend Robert was employed by the Food Bank for 26 years and I am chasing his time
as the longest lasting male employee.
Two ladies have longer service times.
Those being Debbie Amberge, were 36 and a half years in our Prestonburg facility.
She started on 19th of October 1987, sadly my good friend Debbie passed earlier this year,
and I miss her greatly, she never retired.
Daniel Bozar with currently just under 30 years, she started on 30th of May 1995.
It would take me just over 11 years to catch up with Debbie's service record, which would
take me to the age of 68, unsure if I shall still be employed by then.
What exactly do I mean by Food Bank?
In February 2023 I wrote a blog post with my explanation of Food Bank.
My website is linuxspider.net and you will find the direct link in the show notes.
The blog was written as a response to friends, mostly for the United Kingdom, asking me
this very question.
To many there and indeed here in USA also, what is called a Food Bank is what I call local
food pantry.
Nobody is wrong here at all, we all got the food from various sources and distributed
to our neighbors who are in food insecure need.
Most pantries are totally staffed by volunteers and often open limited hours.
The Food Bank is a larger scope and where we source food from, the amount sourced does
have paid staff but still dependent on volunteers and we are open at least 40 hours a week, more
if you include projects that involve evenings and Saturdays.
Glass Pantry Food Bank is a service area which includes 50 of the 120 counties of Kentucky,
covering Central, Southern and Eastern, including part of Appalachia.
When I started in 1999 we were distributed in 6 million pounds way or food per year.
This is about 150 semi-truck loads.
Over 25 years later we are looking at distributing about 50 million pounds, about 1,250 trucks.
Over 40% of our distribution is fresh produce.
We are in hunger of relief organization so this amount of food is assisting our neighbors
in need.
In those 50 counties we have about 400 partner agencies.
Many of these agencies are soup kitchens, children's programs, senior programs as well
as food pantries.
Glass Pantry Food Bank is partnered with the Food and American Network of 198 food banks.
In my early years I knew them as America's second harvest, in 2008 they changed their
name to Feed in America.
The website isfeedinamerica.org.
What they do is outlined in their our work page including, ensuring everyone can get
the food they need with respect and dignity, advocating for policies that improve food security
for everyone.
Partnering to address the root causes of food insecurity, like the high cost of living
and lack of access to affordable housing.
Working with local food banks and meal programs.
Ending hunger through food access, food rescue, disaster response and hunger research.
I have visited a few other food banks but knows many as I would have liked.
We all have our own service areas but often do interact with them as the needs arise especially
in times of disaster.
The Feedinamerica Network came to Kentucky's aid in the past few years with a flooding
in the east and tornadoes in the west.
In America aided the food banks affected by the devastation from hurricanes, Helene
and Milton.
How did I get started at the food bank?
As mentioned in my introduction show, I moved from Scotland to Kentucky in May 1999 and
Married Adriana in June 1999.
Before our wedding I received my green card.
My future mother-in-law, Eva, recommended a check of God's pantry food bank to see
if they were hiring.
She was working for big lots and applied for a warehouse job at the food bank.
Unfortunately for her, she never got the job but she was quite impressed by the organization.
She knew that I had warehouse and driving experience.
To one day after dropping Aidan at the University of Kentucky Medical South Office, I stopped
by the food bank on South Forbes Road to ask.
The answer was that they were indeed hiring for the warehouse and to come back that afternoon
to meet with CWJURI the warehouse manager.
I drove home, put on smarter clothes and drove back.
There was a pleasure meeting CWJU and hearing about the job.
Although most of the explanation of what they did in their mission went over my head at
a time, I knew I needed a job and wanted to join this company.
A few days before our wedding I received a phone call from CW offering me the position,
accepted and went for my medical next day.
My first day with God's Pantry Food Bank was on Tuesday 6 July 1999, the day after a honeymoon.
I will admit that although my previous job in Scotland was a physical one, quite a few
months had passed and the heat was hot that summer in Kentucky.
I went home exhausted every day but totally enjoying the work I was doing.
I sat off mostly picking orders, assisting agencies that came in, going to the local
Cogra supermarket to pick up bread, deliver and pick up food battles of donations and
all the other duties CW assigned me to.
I particularly enjoyed the software part of the job.
I forget the name of the software back then but do remember allowing me to attend digit
item codes.
While the ten digits, the first is a source, the second and third are the category and
there are 31 officially with food in America.
The next six are the unique UPC, usually from the item barcode and the last the tenth
is a storage code of dry, cooler or freezer.
The first code I memorized was bread products, 104, 00, 107, 31.
This broke down to donated bread category, the UPC number and dry storage.
I must admit that we did not create a new code when we started storing a bread product
in the cooler.
That is probably the only exception though.
It has been my responsibility all these years to maintain the item category code sheet
with different codeings we have used and had to invent.
An example is that when the source digit had already used 1 to 9, we decided using letters.
Although there were concerns at a time, everything worked out well.
When I started at South Forbes Road, there were 11 employees there and Debbie in Pressensburg,
12 in total and 2 locations.
These days we have over 80 employees and 5 locations.
Lexington, Pressensburg, London, Morehead and a volunteer centre on Winchester's Road
Lexington near the Smokers-GF peanut butter plant.
My time at 104 South Forbes Road was for a full four weeks.
In August 1999, we moved to 1685 Jaggy Foxway into a customized warehouse with three pallet
tall racking and lots of office space.
It felt so large back then.
On my first couple of days of unloading trucks there, I totally wore a pair of trainers.
Jaggy Fox does sound like a strange name for a street, but I later learned that came
from two ladies, Mrs. Jaggy and Mrs. Fox, who owned the line before the business park
purchase.
Anyway, that's what I've been told by multiple people.
Technology was fun in 1989 as we had a 56k modem, about 10 computers and 1 printer.
You can imagine the shared internet speed.
I forget for how long, but we eventually got DSL then cable.
What I've been my duties at the food bank.
For my first dedicated employment, I worked at the warehouse and there's a driver.
This included delivering food to the four or five local pantries that we run ourselves
on local church buildings in Fayette County.
Funny story is a couple of years into the job, I was approached by the development manager
and asked if I knew websites in these TML.
I informed her that I was familiar and she made me responsible for the maintenance of
the website that University of Kentucky students had created.
It was indeed quite basic with only HTML and images.
I had this GE for a few years before a professional company was hired.
I mentioned Inventory Software.
In early 2000, we moved an ERP that is an enterprise resource planning suite, named Navision,
written by a Danish company.
That company was taken over by Microsoft.
For a while, it was called Microsoft Nav, and these days it is part of Dynamics 365.
Feed America commissioned a module named Series, C-E-R-E-S, which assisted us non-profits
to use profit-oriented software.
Inhouse we just called a software series.
Even though I was no longer maintaining a website, I was still involved in IT to a degree.
I became the in-house guy who was set up new employees with their own computer.
Ah, the days of active directory, I never did like it.
I was also the guy the staff came to first with the computer problems.
Funny how a lot of the issues were fixed when they walked into their office.
If I could not fix an issue there and then, we did have a contract company on call.
They maintained our server and other high-level software.
This was still when I was no warehouse role.
After that first decade, I was allocated to be our welcome center person, which I did
for three years.
This involved welcoming agencies, guests, salespersions, volunteers, and assisting other staff members
in many ways.
I also went from being a driver to the person who handed out delivery and pick up routes
to the drivers.
During those years I became a heavy user of series, working with the agencies and printing
out pick sheets to our warehouse picking staff.
Although I really enjoyed the work, I will openly admit that I am not always the best in
heavily social situations.
I did have some difficulty when the welcome center was full of people, leaving my attention
and I was trying to get software and paperwork duties done, somehow I survived.
My next stage of employment was moving into the offices and becoming the assistant to
the operations director.
This is when I really took on the role of food purchaser, ordering fresh produce and
food from vendors as part of our budget.
I also took over the responsibility of bidding for food donations from the Feed America
Portal named Choice.
The national donors offer truckloads of food and other items to the network.
And we food banks bid on them in an allocated share system.
The donations are free, but we pay for the truck freight from the shipping locations.
A full-time IT person was hired, we are now on our fourth IT manager, they have lost
to each other's assistants.
Although I am grandfathered in as an admin, my duties in this regard are very low, but
still have the ability to install software as needed, quite handy on my own laptop.
As well as being the Food Procurement Officer, I also became the Reporting Officer.
This has been greatly aided by our team receiving the ability to write our own reports from
the Niversion SQL database using Jet Reporting.
This is an Excel extension that allows us to access field data and not directly obtainable
in the series program.
The aforementioned Robert Sadolsky used to spend a whole day creating a monthly report
that included all of our 50 counties across multiple categories of data.
He would step by step complete an Excel worksheet with all this information.
A 2K spreadsheet converted into a Jet report and now it runs in about 5 minutes.
What a difference.
It is my responsibility to supply reports on a regular monthly, quarterly and yearly
basis to my directors, fellow staff and to Food in America.
Yes, I do have an orange mug on my desk that says, I submitted my NPR.
That is the monthly pulse report.
It sits next to my red swing line stapler, my stapler.
What are God's pantry food bank sources of food?
This is probably a question I get asked the most when friends and online contacts find
it why do for a career.
We receive and obtain food from various sources including local donations from people like
you, thank you, local farmers, local retail companies and other businesses giving food
directly to us and to our partner agencies.
We are the official food charity of many retailers including Walmart and Kruger.
National companies mostly food feed in America choice program.
The USDA, US Department of Agriculture, supplies us with multiple programs of food like
T-FAP, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, CCC, Community Credit Corporation and CSFP
Community Supplemental Food Program.
Also purchase food including fresh produce via donations and grants.
Without all this food coming in we would not be able to distribute to our internal programs
or to our partner agencies allowing them to run backpacks for kids, food boxes for seniors,
food pantries, mobile distributions, sharing thanksgiving and in multiple of all the services
we offer our neighbours.
We have a team of food sources that work directly with the retail companies so I am not fully
involved there but I am the main food purchaser for the majority of the food we buy.
Specialised internal programs like backpack and local pantries do all the specific food
items in need on a regular basis.
I try to supply for the long term.
With the USDA CSFP program I am responsible for the ordering of that food for a government
website, often six to twelve months ahead of time.
Here is a truth that staggers many people have been informed of them.
If you are spending cash and food donations to God's Pantry Food Bank the most efficient
use of these funds is to donate it to us.
I truly can obtain about ten dollars worth of food for every one dollar given.
An example is that I recently obtained a full truckload donation of £40,000 weight
of canned sliced-beats yum that we are paying on the fate on, do the maths.
Where is God's Pantry Food Bank located?
As mentioned we have five locations, not including our own local pantries, but our head
main office is at 2201 in Navation Drive.
Please check out our web page at God'sPantry.org, 2201 in Navation Drive.
As it includes an excellent animated walkthrough tour of the offices and warehouses, including
our produs cooler, daily cooler and freezer, they are massive.
I personally waited until the very last day, Friday the 13th of December, to move out of
my Jaggy Fox warehouse and into my new one at Navation.
Our official first day was on Monday 16th of December, to whoah 2024.
What I too had been posted on that Friday caught the eye of my CEO, Michael Halegan, and
he asked if he could share it with others, of course he should.
In the show notes I have included a link to my Masters on Toot, it is too long a number
to read out.
I am absolutely loving our new location, it is my challenge to fill the cooler, freezer
and dry warehouse with donated food.
My new office is 97% set up to my workflow, including my infamous hanging in board reports
and spiders everywhere.
The last line of my blog says, all that said, it truly is the only job I have ever had,
which I absolutely enjoy, but totally wish I did not exist, I may repeat that.
All that said, it is truly the only job I have ever had, which I absolutely enjoy, but
totally wish did not exist.
This remains true.
Our mission is, reducing hunger but working together to feed Kentucky communities, our
vision is another life for every Kentucky.
How may HBR listeners support God's Panty Food Bank?
The quick answer is to go to our website of God's Panty.org and click on take action.
From there you will be given a list to choose from.
This includes donate food, volunteer, to get host a food driver, a fundraiser, to become
a partner, attend an event, advocate and there are other ways to help.
Thank you so much for listening to my HBR show on God's Panty Food Bank, apart from
leaving a comment on the HBR show page, the easiest ways for people to contact me are
via Telegram, t.may, forward slash solar spider, and repeat t.may, forward slash solar spider,
or master done at atsolispideratlinuxrocks.online.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Now go forth, be there for your fellow neighbors, and record your own HBR show.
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