Hunger Heroes Bus Tour Provides Behind-the-Scenes Look at NTFB’s Feeding Network

Participants visited Aunt Bette’s Community Pantry and White Rock Center of Hope.

Supporters of the North Texas Food Bank received a first-hand look at the importance of nutrition and neighbor choice during a recent Hunger Heroes Bus Tour that stopped at Aunt Bette’s Community Pantry and White Rock Center of Hope in Dallas.

The fall tour aimed to give participating NTFB donors, Volunteer Kernels and board members a look at how a few of NTFB’s partner pantries operate, as NTFB’s 500 partners distributed more than 90% of its physical meals during the last fiscal year.

“Thanks to the Food Bank, we feed anyone who is hungry,” said Kelvin Browning, the director of community pantry at Aunt Bette’s.

Kelvin and Angelyn Page, food pantry coordinator, talked with NTFB guests about how their organization has grown from an all-volunteer effort in the late 1980s to a staffed operation that still relies heavily on volunteers to serve the community.

Aunt Bette’s moved into a new, larger facility about a year ago and provides over 300 neighbors each week with pantry staples, protein and fresh produce. The pantry is set up like a grocery store and volunteers walk through with neighbors and assist them as they pick out the food they want and know their family will eat.

The pantry is also one of NTFB’s Nudge Pantries, which means it’s equipped with shelf tags, recipe cards and other materials meant to “nudge” neighbors into selecting healthier foods, said Jamie Palefsky, NTFB Nutrition Education Specialist, who spoke during the bus tour.

Angelyn and Kelvin said often providing recipes—and even passing out samples of recipes that they’ve cooked at home—is what’s needed to get neighbors to try something new, whether lentils or butternut squash. Once they know how to prepare it in a healthy way, Angelyn says, they’re often excited to return and get more so they can cook it again.

At White Rock Center of Hope, Bus Tour guests were able to see another example of a neighbor choice pantry. The nonprofit recently shifted to that model thanks to an NTFB grant that allowed it to add commercial shelving, coolers, a freezer merchandiser and other materials.

“The grant really allowed us to transition from providing groceries to providing neighbor choice,” Greg says Greg Smith, Ph.D. and Chief Executive Officer. “We would not be able to do anything close to what we do without the support of the North Texas Food Bank.”

White Rock also hosts Saturday drive-through distributions for those who can’t shop when they’re open during the week.

Along with the pantry options, White Rock has a clothes closet that supports families and it runs a thrift store that raises money to support more than 40% of its operating budget.

In addition to the NTFB grant that helped equip its pantry, White Rock received a separate grant that allowed them to purchase a refrigerated box truck so they could increase the number of retail food donation pickups they do each week.

Brandon Boling, NTFB Senior Community Impact Specialist who spoke during the tour, says grants are critical to the NTFB because they help our partners to grow and serve more neighbors.

Following their tour at White Rock, bus tour participants helped to pack grocery bags full of canned goods that would be handed out the following day during a Saturday distribution.

“This was really informative,” said one guest, who is a regular NTFB volunteer and donor. She added that while she has given back in the NTFB warehouse and at one of its partner pantries, she learned a lot about NTFB’s different nutrition offerings and about how neighbor choice pantries operate.