Cloverdale Food Pantry thriving, support still needed - Sonoma West

Cloverdale Food Pantry thriving, support still needed - Sonoma West

Jerry Huot has a simple message for the Cloverdale community: the Cloverdale Food Pantry and its volunteers are there with fresh, good food 52 weeks a year for people in need, and they need your support.

“People can come and get food and it doesn’t cost them a thing,” he said. “They choose what they want and don’t want. We used to make up bags of food but they’d take them out and throw some things away, so we changed it and they come in and they get to choose what they want.”

The Cloverdale Food Pantry is managed by four groups on a monthly rotating basis, including the Cloverdale United Church, the Living Waters Baptist Church, the Kiwanis and St. Peter’s Catholic Church.

“We don’t have one person as the chairperson, we have people who are running it for each group, and they are verbally in contact all the time,” Huot said.

Each week, the pantry receives food donations from local companies like Ray’s Market, Dahlia & Sage, The Trading Post, Grocery Outlet and Panaderia El Palomo.

“Each of those places, we have pickup that’s made every week and some of them we make at different times,” Huot said. “Dahlia & Sage we go a couple times a week, as they have smaller amounts, for example. The pickup date changes so we talk to each of them each week.”

In addition, on Fridays, volunteers go to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa to pick up the bulk of their items. The Redwood Empire Food Bank charges 18 to 20 cents a pound for all items. Huot says there can be specials through the food bank that savvy Cloverdale Food Pantry volunteers know to be on the lookout for, and during the holidays there are often free turkeys and other seasonal items available.

But, the fact that those items must be paid for, plus other overhead costs, means that even with a steady stream of food donations, the Cloverdale Food Pantry still needs financial support from the community. In a budget shared with the Reveille, it appears that rental for the location, PG&E costs, trash service, cleaning crew and payments to the Redwood Empire Food Bank totals around $4,000 in operating expenses for three months.

This is in addition to the costs of volunteers, either in their own vehicles or in a van owned by the pantry, travelling around the county to collect food and donations.

The Cloverdale Food Pantry is open every Friday from 1 to 3 p.m., and a number system prevents a line from building too early. Shoppers, as the clients are called, can come early in the day and receive a wine cork with a number on it, denoting the order in which they’ll be allowed in to select from bread, dairy, eggs, fresh produce and sweets.

Every fourth visit (shoppers register on a database, though no information other than their name is retained or tracked) they get what’s called a “complete” which gives them access to the back room, where specialty items like canned goods, cereal, tuna, peanut butter, spaghetti, soup and rice are kept.

Because these items are heavy, they are often the most expensive from the Redwood Empire Food Bank, so shoppers are only given limited access to these items. Depending on a given week’s inventory, shoppers may also be limited in the number of certain other items they are allowed to take, such as eggs, dairy and sliced bread.

The Cloverdale Food Pantry runs several fundraisers throughout the year, including its “Christmas in June” for canned goods and beans and an October food drive run by the Seventh Day Adventists with another by the postal service later in the year.

“I’ll pick up 100 crates from the Adventists,” Huot said.

But, without discounting how helpful those drives can be, Huot wants people to know that the pantry also needs money and financial contributions are always welcome. “The best thing about donations of funds is they’re tax exempt. Your group can get a receipt and you know it will go for things we know they’re eating, as it pays our bill at Redwood Empire. Sometimes we don’t buy much, but sometimes we buy a bunch and it lets us get more stuff.”

The Cloverdale Food Pantry is also looking for more volunteers. Interested parties should contact one of the four groups involved in manning the pantry.

“The people that work there are joyful people and I see a change in the temperament of people who work there,” Huot said. “People delight in going there.”