SLO Food Bank moves into new headquarters

Wednesday was moving day for the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County. At its brand new headquarters in San Luis Obispo, Food Bank employees started the long process of moving thousands of pounds of food into the massive 20,000 square foot facility.

“We are so excited,” said Food Bank Chief Operating Officer Wendy Lewis. “We are finally moving into our new home. This new warehouse will give us the ability to feed so many more people, become more efficient and serve the community even better.”

The new building, located on Kendall Road near the airport, will replace existing Food Bank facilities in Oceano and Paso Robles.

“We’ve gained a lot of efficiencies at this faculty,” said Food Bank Warehouse Manager Tim Parker. “Like having a proper loading dock, having the increased cold storage and being in a centralized location in the county.”

Food Bank management says the new location provides a geographical advantage in maintaining all of its existing programs and services.

“No services will cease,” said Lewis. “We’re still going to serve the entire county and the communities that we’re in. We bring the food out to where people are at, not the opposite.”

Lewis notes the Food Bank distributes more than six million pounds of food at 78 different county locations throughout the year. The new facility will simplify and streamline that massive undertaking.

“This merging into one will help us expand and serve the community even better at distributions where needed and get more food out to our agency partners since we won’t have two overheads,” said Lewis.

One of the most important features of the new facility is the refrigeration unit. It features a freezer and cooler, which combined measures 3,000 square feet. The unit gives the Food Bank almost 50 percent more storage capacity than what it currently has at its two separate warehouses.

“This facility gives us the opportunity to store more product,” said Parker. “Specifically to better capture local opportunities. A lot of donated produce in this county, or our neighboring counties, we’ve not been able to say yes to the opportunity to take it because we haven’t had enough space to store it.”

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With the busy holiday season fast approaching, Lewis adds the opening of the new warehouse couldn’t come at a better time.

“We have even more activity during that time and we feed more people,” Lewis said. “Hunger is 365 days out of the year, but during that holiday period, we have special things going on. Turkey giveaways, Turkey Drives, and it’s really important that we we’re in now to make sure all of that will keep happening and no distributions will stop. Even during the move, we have all of our distributions going, so people are getting the food that they need.”

The new facility was made possible through a capital campaign that is still ongoing.

“We are about halfway to our goal,” Lewis said. “We’re really hopeful that if donations keep coming in, we’re going to be able to pay down the mortgage, which means more food going out to the community.”

Those interested in assisting the Food Bank, can visit http://www.slofoodbank.org/