MISSOULA, Mont. — Montana Food Bank Network (MFBN) is Montana’s only statewide food bank and partner food bank of Feeding America. MFBN serves 330 network partners including community food banks, pantries, schools, senior centers, and shelters. The shared mission is to end hunger across our state, and now MFBN can make a larger impact with their brand-new facility.
“One of the things that we’re excited about is just increased capacity all around,” Montana Food Bank Network Vice President & Chief Operations Officer Brent Weisgram said.
“This facility, we increased, almost tripled our size of capacity, not just in warehouse, but cooler and freezer.”
There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday, Oct. 22 but why wait? NBC Montana was able to get an exclusive tour and see firsthand the work the Montana Food Bank Network is doing.
“This has been a work in progress for about seven years, and we’re excited that we’re finally moved in and getting off the ground running and exciting to show you where we’re at and what we’ve achieved,” Weisgram said.
With more space, there’s more opportunity.
“Being able to leverage and accept access to all the resources that we have coming our way to not say no but to be able to say yes,” Weisgram said.
This facility was a project of seven years in the making and they certainly have evolved.
“Another aspect, we have increased our ability to host volunteers now,” Weisgram said. “We used to be restricted to maybe two groups of six or so confined, and now we’re able to boost up and we’re able to accommodate groups of 20, 30 volunteers at a time… It’s number one to say we have the capacity, then we can focus on distribution outputs and now we are finally there… We’re working on six semi-loads of frozen turkeys that we’re going to be distributing over the holidays this year.”
There are now more opportunities for fresh produce and dairy.
“It’s about a healthy diet and now we’re being able to put all those components together,” Weisgram said. “As we go into the cooler here which you can see is empty produce is a quick turnaround. We just brought in two semi loads of produce on Monday, today’s Thursday we’ve already turned around and distributed it.”
How vital is that because that wasn’t an option before?
“Well, it’s huge, especially because we’ve identified it as one of the largest items of food that’s available right now that is not being consumed in our country and in our state and keeping food waste is important,”Weisgram said.
What else have you got to show us?
“Well coming into this this is our most one of our most important critical and our most exciting features is the freezer because that’s where we’ll be able to buy ourselves time by freezing it so we’ll go through quick it’s minus 10 degrees in here but this is where all our holiday turkeys all of our frozen meat is right now and as you can see we’re filling it up and it’s coming in fast,” Weisgram said.
As we closed out the tour and thanked Weisgram, he was quick to point out the great opportunities that lie ahead for the MFBN.
“You never know what’s going to happen in life or where your community or what’s, your family’s impacted, but it’s reassuring to know that if something does happen, we’re here, we’re here to help, we’ve got partnerships in every county, every community across the state, ready to jump in and make sure that all of our neighbors and our healthy communities can thrive.”
