Laurie Settle receives information from an attendee of a pantry put on by the Food Bank of Southern California. Photos by Vanessa Rodriguez.
In this Q&A, VoiceWaves Youth Reporter Vanessa Rodriguez speaks with Laurie Settle, the Senior Director of Programs and Product Acquisition at the Food Bank of Southern California, about the role that food banks play in local communities and how residents can get involved in the Foodbank’s efforts to feed their neighbors.
How does Food Bank of SoCal work to provide food throughout the city of Long Beach?
Well, we have close to or over 200 partner agencies that we work with, that have contacted us, we have vetted them. We have gone out to their sites and then we have invited them into an orientation where they sign a contract where they agree to abide by the rules not only from the state, but from what from what we do as well here. They sign up, they agree to the terms and then we tell them this is you know what you’re going to start out doing. So they partner with us and then they have communities that they go to and they distribute food in those communities all over LA County.
How many mobile food pantries are in service throughout Long Beach per week?
It could be anywhere from four to five a week.
Mobile food pantry is what we do internally… we load up our truck with food and we go to a site, we set up, and serve that community. Our partners, they call in, they place their orders. The next day, they come pick it up. Then they take it, they either store it or they distribute that same day. So they’re all over LA County. We have a lot here in Long Beach.
Mobile food pantry is considered a program. One of the other programs we have is called Brown Bag, which takes care of our seniors. That goes to senior centers. And so we always want to take care of them because sometimes they can be forgotten or because they can’t get out due to health reasons or whatever. So we want to make sure we’re taking care of them.
What that is, is that any senior that is living in a senior facility if they are in need, they have program director that reaches out to us and say but we have seen us here that that need for can get out or whatever. We partner with them. We have applications that they fill out so you know that these people are, you know, basically legit and then also we do a menu for them. We give them five food items, we give them two fresh veggies, and then hopefully a protein if we have it, and then a couple of other shelf stable items to go. So we put that together. The guys, the warehouse staff, they they put it together and then they put it on a pallet and then they take that and drop that off at the facility.
That happens every first and third Tuesday and Wednesday of the month.
Do you have any numbers on how many of the partner site distributions happened per week? Or, maybe even just in estimates.
That could be a couple of 100.
Do you know if any certain areas of Long Beach have a higher amount of distribution or of foot traffic?
I don’t know that. I just know that since we’ve been doing the mobile food pantries, especially the ones in Long Beach, the numbers just keep climbing.
The distributions have been growing for sure. Like right now, we’ve hit like… [Laurie looks through some papers and counts the number of distributions].
13 throughout April and then for May I think we had only nine. Nine mobile food pantries, that was just for the month of May. For June… it was actually 15 that we did.
Can you speak to the supply and demand like how much food comes in versus how many people are coming in?
I wouldn’t be able to give you that information other than [what] I know comes in. But I don’t know how much of it goes out. A lot of it goes out so we’re trying to balance it to where we don’t have more food going out than we have coming in. I also rescue food and I also purchase food. The majority of our food comes through from the state.
Do you know about how many individual people are serviced by Food Bank of SoCal and in Long Beach per week?
I wouldn’t know to break it down by that but I can tell you… [as of] June, we’re at 1.2 million individuals that we’ve served. That’s a lot. That’s a lot.
Where does the supply come from?
It comes from USDA. I also have a monthly budget to purchase food and then we also rescue food, meaning if companies produce more than they can get out before the the best by date or expiration date, they call around “would you like it? Can you guys take this?” So I do a lot of that as well.
… We’re like the second largest bank in LA County.
That’s a lot.
We could use more.
Can you talk about who needs support most often?
Hispanics and the Asian, Cambodian community.
For May, we distributed to households, 1,697 households that means people that stood in line and came through the mobile food pantries, right? And of that, 576 were Asian, 908 were Hispanic. So those are the math in there of the households.
Do you have percentages or numbers of just how much of the demographics?
Our numbers for May, we distributed to 1,697 households, which means people that stood in line and came through the mobile food pantries. And of that, 576 were Asian, 908 were Hispanic.
Since a lot of people are noticing like higher bills and higher prices of things of post-COVID, do you know if there’s more since COVID or do you think it’s probably about the same as before?
Well, I wasn’t here around COVID. I started here in 2022. So I couldn’t answer you pre-COVID. I can tell you where we started [when I got here]. Now… for May, we had 1,697 that came through our lines. For the month of April, we had 2,388 that came through. And that was because we have our partners, and we were doing one [event] every Tuesday. But it became too much because I was doing a lot of work and there was nobody else so I was like, “I can’t,” so we took them down to once a month, which started in May. That’s why our numbers dropped. But to take you back, when we first started… [we distributed to] 245 people. This was back in 2022. December of 2022. And now we’re where we are just recently at 1,697 or whatever it was.
Can you speak a bit about the necessity and importance of Food Banks in Long Beach specifically?
Because we have so many food deserts in Long Beach, I mean, they’re all over but we have quite a bit in Long Beach, and hearing the need because of higher prices of everything, and it’s just continuing to go up. Then we, understand that we have a lot of undocumented workers that sometimes can’t keep a consistent job, we’re hearing from some of our partners. And rent, gas, everything is going up. There’s been a significant need. People losing their jobs. People still recovering from COVID, meaning whether they were sick or because they lost a job and are still trying to recover from that. The need has been great. We get the calls in, “I need food,” we get people coming in, where we don’t distribute food from here to the community… That’s why we have our partners. That’s why we have our mobile food pantries in our calendars, that will show where we’re going to be in the area.
How is word spread about these resources?
Word of mouth, seeing our trucks, people standing in line, social media.
So, other than word of mouth and seeing this in person, is social media probably the best way for people to find out about resources near them?
We have people that call all time, “where can I get food, where can I get food?” And we have a list of [partners], specifically those that are close, that we refer them to if it’s [active] the day that they’re distributing food, and they go. And then again, we have our calendar of mobile food pantries in the area.
How is the Food Bank looking to improve or change in the future?
Well, we’re looking to do a lot more outreach, grow some of our programs like our Brown Bag program, getting new partners for mobile food pantries. And we have a new building on Cherry [Avenue] in North Long Beach, which we’re calling a sharehouse. Because North Long Beach is one of the [food] deserts in Long Beach and we want to invite some of our our partners who are struggling to have a place because of whatever reason, to have office space there, and and also to have a place to store their food that they get. We also have a freezer and a refrigerator over there to store that. Then we’re also looking to do a prep kitchen there for people to come in and run whole classes and just try to do something for the community. So just trying to make sure that we do things right and whatever we can do to fulfill the need of food insecurity for the communities of Long Beach.
… Because we just got it, like, last year, we’re just starting to do remodeling again. We just finished installing the freezer and the cooler.
One of the things we’re looking to do, you know how they have taco trucks? We have a truck that we’re getting remodeled to be like a moving kitchen that we can be able to go out like first responders when they go out to a disaster, to be able to take the kitchen there and be able to feed them and possibly feed the homeless in some areas.
Is there anything that like an average person can do to help out with like the the mission of the Food Bank of SoCal?
Volunteers are extremely critical to what we do. Whether they’re in here helping because we have corporate volunteers that come and they put together what we call family food boxes, which is a meal, which are shelved statewide and in a box that can make maybe three or four meals for family. Volunteering to come out to our Mobile Food Pantry, or signing up online. Always donations, whether it’s food donations, or monetary donations always help. But volunteers, for sure.
You said earlier that you had to stop working at a site just because you couldn’t keep up with going there all the time by yourself. Is that something that a volunteer could do?
Definitely. Volunteers. We get them trained. And we have some regular volunteers that come out to our local food pantries and help us out. People, you know, retired or they just want to give back and that’s how they do it. You know, they sign up and say “oh I can come to this one.” I’m always, always welcoming to volunteers.
To learn more about the Foodbank of Southern California, visit their website at foodbankofsocal.org
