With a sizable food donation from Augusta National Golf Club, Golden Harvest Food Bank continues to provide food to those in need across the Augusta area.
Augusta National’s donation consists of approximately 2,000 pounds of produce, bread and dairy items and 50,000 bags of potato chips. The food is being used to serve meals at The Master’s Table soup kitchen downtown, as well as emergency meals going out to those in the community.
The gift comes after Golden Harvest received a grant as part of the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund from United Way and Community Foundation of the CSRA.
The chips, in particular, bring an Augusta feel to the meals. The bags would have been used in concession stands at the Masters Tournament, so they adorn the famous logo. Golden Harvest executive director Amy Breitmann noted Augusta National’s creativity in utilizing its resources.
“It’s particularly encouraging to see the Augusta National, their creativity with their resources, and using the concession items from the postponed Masters Tournament to give to us and to pass on to those that we serve,” she said. “It really is such a special tradition and to give some of those people that we serve some of that experience is really priceless.”
“With them opening up that plate and seeing that, they were so excited because they felt like they were being a part of it,” she said. “A lot of my guests have probably never been to Augusta National, so it was such an honor to be able to make those plates.”
With social distancing in mind, even operations at the soup kitchen have changed. Most meals are served in to-go boxes and guests eat in the courtyard, rather than in the dining area.
Covering 25 counties under normal circumstances is a tall order. Breitmann said keeping that same coverage during the pandemic has caused them to look at which areas need the most assistance, while balancing the increase in requests.
“We’ve really had to do some triage and look at where the pockets of hunger are and where we need to get out and do emergency mobile pantries,” she said. “For instance, this week I believe we’re doing one in Sylvania and also Richmond County. Last week we were in Lincolnton, so we’re just trying to look at where our pantries are and how they are operating. It’s definitely ramped up all of our services with a skeletal staff, so you can definitely understand the decrease in resources and a definite increase in our need.”
Breitmann added the skeletal staff is thanks, in part, to having to suspend Golden Harvest’s volunteer program. Added to most of the employees working remotely, the difficulties are magnified. They have received assistance from the Georgia National Guard in packing and distributing meals.
“It’s really changed just about every system that we had in place, having to suspend our volunteer program, we normally rely on about 1,100 volunteers a month,” she said. “We’ve relied on National Guard sorting and packing emergency food boxes, which is also a new procedure, in order to get food to people in a drive-through, no-touch model.”
According to Breitmann, Golden Harvest has distributed 1.6 million meals to 50,000 families across their 25 counties.