Pittsburgh food bank president worries about supply running out
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Lisa Scales has worked in food banks for nearly 25 years. She was involved in food distribution efforts in response to Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and to the 9/11 attacks in New York.
She has never experienced anything like the need associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
“I have never seen a spike in need to this degree,” said Scales, president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. “I have never seen need like we’ve seen in the past several weeks in the Pittsburgh region and frankly across the country.”
Scales is facing a harsh reality that the current need for food is greater than the food bank’s supply can meet.
So far, the food bank has held four large-scale, drive-up distributions and served boxes of food to over 5,000 cars. It has more distributions planned and is developing other methods of getting food into the community. But Scales believes that in the midst of the covid-19 crisis, the food bank has met its match.
“It’s hard for me to say this, but the need is so significant that, despite our best efforts, I know that we will not be able to meet all of the need that’s in the community throughout the entirety of the crisis,” Scales said.
As a member of Feeding America, the national network of food banks, Scales said she is more accustomed to providing assistance when a disaster happens. Those times call for arriving in a location and responding to needs of specific communities.
“You have an abundance of resources flowing into that community. With this, because it’s nationwide, we’re responding to a disaster that’s evolving, it’s growing and there’s so much uncertainty because it’s an infectious pandemic,” said Scales. “It’s an incredible challenge to respond to this crisis and the crush of demand that we’re seeing.”
Scales said she is concerned about her food supply and how long it will last. The problem is compounded by so many people being thrown into unemployment at the same time due to businesses closing with the spread of the virus.
“Not only are we serving people who we would traditionally serve, children and seniors who are low income, but we are now seeing on top of that so many people who are calling, coming to the food bank and going to the food distributions who have never been in need of food assistance before.”
A food distribution event Monday in Duquesne had some 300 cars lined up and waiting for boxes of food before the event even started. Video of the long line of cars made several national news broadcasts.
Lisa Scales of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank says resources are a concern amid coronavirus.
"We are afraid that eventually we may run out of food. Right now, our food supply is strong, but we have seen a significant increase in demand in just the past two weeks." pic.twitter.com/z77nfrgYve
— CNN (@CNN) March 31, 2020
Now Scales and others at the food bank are realizing their biggest fear: not having enough food to help all of the people who need it. Their focus has been on keeping up their stock of “shelf-stable” items such as peanut butter, tuna fish, canned fruits and vegetables and pasta – items needed because people will be stuck at home for several weeks.
In addition to receiving donations, the food bank has a wholesale buying program to purchase items such as rice and canned goods from food brokers. But Scales said that recently those items have been hard to come by because some of their large orders have been canceled.
“They’ve told us that they’re getting higher bids for (shelf stable) products and that retail businesses are actually offering them more money even though we have a purchase order with them,” Scales said. “Prior to the crisis, if we placed an order, we were sure that it would come in. Now we place an order and there is a level of uncertainty that did not exist before.”
For now, Scales says the food bank is committed to remaining open and meeting as much of the demand as it can.
“Our staff has been amazing. We’ve worked tirelessly around the clock, many 16 hours days, seven days a week for the past three weeks to develop new and different ways to get food out so that we can meet people’s needs.”