Feeding the Valley in home stretch for opening new center, helping more people

When it comes to the importance of Feeding the Valley’s state-of-the-art distribution center being built just off Flat Rock Road in Columbus, Pastor Terry Rainwater points directly to the much larger cold storage capacity that will be inside the 31,000-square-foot facility.

“The more that they can stock here, the better,” said Rainwater, whose Highland Baptist Church in the Troup County community of Hogansville, Ga., operates God’s Bread Basket, a food bank serving about 1,000 people a month.

“We’re ordering about 12,000 pounds a month of food, give or take a couple of thousand pounds. They’ve been so low on meat because of storage space that we’ve not had it to give our clients for the last couple of months. So the freezer and the cooler are going to add to what we can give our food clients.”

Much more fresh chicken and beef, along with ample supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables, are among the improvements the new center will offer. There also will be the ability for clients such as God’s Bread Basket and the Boys and Girls Club of the Chattahoochee Valley to place their orders via the Internet.

“Many of these agencies are operating on shoestring budgets with a very low staff, and that will alleviate a lot of labor hours and labor time for them,” said Frank Sheppard, Feeding the Valley’s president and chief executive officer. “They won’t have to come in here and do their shopping and take the food all of the way back. They’ll be able to sit at their computer and take care of all of that, and the food will show up at their front door.”

Construction on the $3.5 million facility at 6938 Jamesson Way is about a month ahead of schedule because of the dry weather the area experienced as the roof and walls were going up, Sheppard said. The interior is now being finished out, he said, with it looking like mid-February will be the time for relocating from Feeding the Valley’s current 23,000-square-foot distribution hub on Coca-Cola Boulevard, about two miles from the new center.

“The one item that is a bit more complicated is the kitchen because there is so much interior equipment that is going to be taken out of there and moving over here,” Sheppard said. “But for the most part, it will be probably just a shutdown for a long weekend, and everything comes over here and we flip on the lights and open for business.”

Feeding the Valley serves about 40,000 people in a 14-county area in west-central Georgia, as well as Russell County in Alabama. The Georgia counties are Chattahoochee, Clay, Harris, Marion, Meriwether, Muscogee, Quitman, Randolph, Schley, Stewart, Talbot, Troup, Schley, Stewart and Webster. Aside from food distribution, it also operates a Kids Café hot meal program.

The food bank supplies more than 200 partner agencies in the region, which encompasses a population of about 430,000. The estimated total number of people considered “chronically hungry” in the coverage area is more than 80,000, Sheppard said, thus the need for a bigger, better facility.

While the new distribution center is only about 8,000 square feet larger than the old one, it will have capacity to deliver double the overall goods to the needy that it now does because of its higher 30-foot ceilings. The freezer and refrigerator space will be four times that of the current facility.

Feeding the Valley distributed just under 8 million pounds of food in its last fiscal year that ended in June, which was an all-time record. That number is expected to reach 10 million pounds within five years at the new location, serving more than 55,000 people.

“Our capacity is so limited now that we’ve had to turn away truckloads of chicken and other meats. We just didn’t have the space to keep that,” Sheppard said. “That has a trickle-down effect on our partner agencies. If we can’t store the food, they can’t come to us and purchase it. Then they cannot supply the food to those in need in their areas. This building will go a long way towards alleviating those needs.”

Brandon Williams, a unit director with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Chattahoochee Valley, stressed that the expansion of Feeding the Valley will be a great moment for his organization, which serves about 300 kids a day at its south Columbus location. The assistance includes the Kids Cafe program.

“We’re more than appreciative and happy that they are in expansion mode and bringing more of a variety and more opportunities for us to have more hot meals and snacks to give to our kids day by day,” Williams said of the food bank, which delivered a hot Thanksgiving meal to the boys and girls this year.

“That’s one of the things that keeps our kids coming day by day, because they know if they’re getting a hot meal and they’re also able to get a snack, it’s more fulfilling to them,” he said.

Rainwater echoed those sentiments for God’s Bread Basket, which purchased about 162,000 pounds of groceries last year from Feeding the Valley. That food was distributed to about 300 families, or just over 950 people, in and around Hogansville, along with a “buddy pack” of food given to 70 elementary school kids at risk of having little or no food over the weekend.

“With the expansion, it’s going to improve our ability to have resources,” said the pastor, whose organization uses a satellite Feeding the Valley distribution facility in LaGrange, Ga., rather than coming all the way to Columbus. “Financial-wise, we’re strictly on an individual donation and church donation basis. We don’t get any government grants or loans.”

Rainwater said as Feeding the Valley’s grows, so will the efforts of his group, which distributes food each Thursday to residents. Each client is allowed to accept items once a month. Hot meals are not part of its service to the community.

“I think we will, strictly if nothing else because of their ability storage wise — the cooler and freezer section is a big plus for us,” he said.

Feeding the Valley is paying for the $3.5 million distribution center through a $4.7 million fund-raising campaign that is beginning to wind down. Thus far, $4.1 million has been pledged, with a $450,000 challenge grant payable by June of next year.

“So we’re in the home stretch,” Sheppard said.

This story was originally published December 8, 2016 at 2:44 PM with the headline "Feeding the Valley in home stretch for opening new center, helping more people."