Think of food banks and you think of canned-food drives and small charitable outlets where shelves of donated items await the needy. Look behind the curtain, however, and youll find a distribution operation that rivals grocery warehouses in sophistication and logistical complexity.


Spokane is home to a regional food-bank distributor, called Second Harvest Food Bank of the Inland Northwest, that serves 300 food banks and meal programs in 26 counties, from an 85,000-square-foot warehouse at 1234 E. Front here.


Last year, Second Harvest distributed 14.3 million pounds of food, valued at $22 million, to food banks, soup kitchens, shelters, group homes, senior centers, youth programs, and rehabilitation centers in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Moving such a huge volume of food requires a fleet of trucks, a state-of-the-art inventory tracking system, and a big staff, including 34 of its own employees, 20 prison inmates who work on contract, and about 2,200 volunteers, says Jason Clark, its executive director.


The organization gets much of the food it distributes through donations from the food industry, and as that industry changes, so must Second Harvest, Clark says. For instance, as processed food manufacturing and distribution becomes more efficient, and thus creates less waste, donations of dry goods shrink, he says.


In response, Second Harvest has adapted, and today about 60 percent of the food it distributes is perishable. The organization distributed 5 million pounds of fresh produce and 1 million pounds of dairy products last year.


While thats good, nutritionally, for the people who rely on food banks, it creates challenges for nonprofits such as Second Harvest, says Clark. Thats because perishables have short shelf lives, which means they must be collected and distributed quickly.


We have to get stuff out really fast, he says. There might be two days left in a products shelf life when the nonprofit gets the call that its available. We dont get to dictate the circumstances, Clark says.


Special handling also is required.Often, the warehouse crews have to repackage perishable items, such as onions that come in 200-pound bags. Also, handling many types of perishable foods results in the added cost of cold storage.


Now, every truck Second Harvest uses has to be refrigerated, and the organization has a 100,000-cubic-foot refrigeration unit at its main warehouse here, Clark says.


Second Harvests 14-vehicle fleet includes two semis and three trailers. The organization spends more than $4,000 a week transporting food. Because of the high cost of transportation, most of the food it handles is donated from and distributed within the region.


In response to another food-industry trend, about 30 retailers in the region are participating in a program called Grocery Rescue. Through the program, Second Harvest sends a driver to collect donations of damaged and unmarketable goods from every department in participating stores.


Were projecting the program will collect 700,000 pounds of food this year, Clark says.


In the past, grocers returned damaged goods to wholesalers and suppliers, who at one time donated a total of about 1 million pounds of food annually to Second Harvest. Now, wholesalers are instead giving credits to local grocers for damaged goods and letting the stores decide for themselves how to dispose of the goods. Because of that change, donations from wholesalers has declined to about 500,000 pounds annually, and Grocery Rescue is intended to make up the difference.


Big need


About 197,000 people are served one or more times annually through the Second Harvest network, including more than 15,000 people per month in Spokane County.


Disturbingly, more and more (of them) have jobs, Clark says. They are the working poor.


Through the 1990s, Second Harvest served 8,000 to 9,000 people a month. The numbers served have shot up since 2000, he says.


The typical person served by the community food banks comes two or three times a year and receives about a weeks worth of groceries per visit. The most chronic food bank clients tend to be seniors on fixed incomes that erode every year. A lot of people with marginal incomes are just on the edge, he says.


Spokane St. Vincent de Paul, which operates the largest food bank in Eastern Washington, gets roughly two-thirds of its food from Second Harvest, which it distributes monthly to 4,000 to 6,000 people.


We communicate every couple of days with Second Harvest, says Adrienne Brownlow, executive director of Spokane St. Vincent de Paul.


Second Harvest enables St. Vincents to use more resources distributing, rather than collecting food.


Without Second Harvest we would have to be doing food drives ourselves, Brownlow says.


Second Harvest Inland Northwest operates on a $2.7 million annual budget. About a third of those funds come from government grants and allocations. The remainder largely comes from private donations from individuals, businesses, and foundations.


We direct our own fate and raise money here in Spokane, Clark says.


Like businesses, Second Harvest relies on having a well-trained work force


Every staff member left a higher paying job to work with us, Clark says. They are doing work above their pay grade, and we need them because we have to have a high level of sophistication.


In addition to the organizations 34-person staff and the 2,200 volunteers it relies on, it contracts with the Washington state Department of Corrections for 20 nonviolent, non-sex-offender prison inmates, who do food-sorting and distribution in the main warehouse. Clark says the prison contract, at $27,000 annually, is a bargain for the organization. We cant afford to hire 20 more people, he says.


The program also gives inmates skills they can use, such as driving a forklift, when they return to society, Clark says.


Second Harvest Inland Northwest, originally known as the Spokane Food Bank, opened in 1971 and has been affiliated with a national food-distribution network, called Americas Second Harvest Network, for about 20 years.


Using its relationships with food-industry giants, like Kellogg Co., Quaker Oats Co., Del Monte Foods Co., and Kraft Foods Inc., that national network supplies about 20 percent of the food distributed through Second Harvest Inland Northwest.


Much of the rest of its inventory comes from relationships with growers, food distributors, and grocery stores, as well as some community food drives.


Food typically is given to us, Clark says. Our responsibility is moving it.


One new source of food Second Harvest expects to tap this year is Washington State Universitys potato research program.


For about 50 years, that program has been throwing away the potatoes it grows for research purposes, Clark says.


This year, they will load up our trucks, he says. It could be 400,000 pounds of potatoes fresh out of the ground.


Because of the cost of the burlap bags those potatoes will be shipped in, WSU wants the bags back, he says. Now were talking about how many potatoes can inmates repackage, Clark says.


Costs incurred by donors can be a problem. Some apple growers, for instance, have about $9 invested in each crate of apples, so when they have surplus apples, they have the option of selling the apples for a modest amount to a juicer to recoup some of the expense. In such a case, Second Harvest reimburses the grower enough of the cost to keep the fruit from being sent to the juicer.


Meanwhile, local food drives brought in about 800,000 pounds of food last year, down from about 1 million pounds in 2004.


Cash donations, however, have been on the rise, totaling nearly $950,000 last year, compared with $375,000 in 2001. Thats good news, Clark says, because Second Harvest can get more food for a dollar than consumers can, so a cash donation goes further than a food donation.


We can move 5.6 pounds offood for $1, he says.


On the other hand, Second Harvest isnt about to turn away food donations. Food drives bring in really high-quality food, Clark says. Well never turn down a can of food.


Contact Mike McLean at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at mikem@spokanejournal.com.