After three-and a half months without a centralized food distribution center, Feeding Northeast Florida began loading up trucks and sending them out from its new 21,000-square-foot warehouse on Edgewood Avenue on Monday.Feeding Northeast Florida President and CEO Bruce Ganger says the focus is on getting donated food into trucks and out to homeless shelters and food pantries in as short a time as possible.
“So the food that I pick up today, my goal is to have it back in the hands of people later today or first thing tomorrow morning instead of bringing it in here, warehousing it and then distributing it in a day or two," he said. "And we’re building a completely different distribution model than what [had] existed here in the community.”
Feeding Northeast Florida took over from Second Harvest of North Florida in March after that food bank had a falling out with the national parent organization.
Ganger says that even without trucks or a warehouse, the food bank has been able to distribute more than a million and a half pounds of food since then.
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