For 13 years, the United Family has teamed up with FirstFruits to help donate apples to local food banks around the region.
On Wednesday, United Supermarkets and Market Street donated 4,960 pounds of apples to the West Texas Food Bank for their Take a Bite Out of Hunger Campaign.
“We’re really excited to have a partnership with United,” West Texas Food Bank Executive Director Libby Campbell said. “They’re such great corporate citizens here in the West Texas area. We’re really lucky. With grocery bills still high, United came up with a creative way for our community to help donate as they bought a bag of apples, they matched a bag of apples to give back to the food bank. Today, we have a lot of apples to the food bank from the kindness of our community and, of course, United Supermarkets.”
The donation marks a continuing commitment by United Supermarkets and Market Street as original partners of the Take a Bite Out of Hunger program which is sponsored by FirstFruits Marketing of Washington.
FirstFruits created the program to help feed the underserved while bringing attention to the problem of food insecurity in the United States.
“In those 13 years, we’ve been able to donate over half a million pounds of apples which goes to feeds tens of thousands of families,” Regional Supervisor of Produce for United Supermarkets Ricky Holman said. “The great thing about it is that apples are not necessarily something people think are necessities but they’re very high in a lot of vitamins and nutrients. They’re very healthy.”
The donation comes at a crucial time as the summer months are approaching which means children will be finishing up with the school year.
It also doesn’t help that inflation continues to take a bite out of families’ grocery bills.
“Right now, we’re seeing the most that we’ve ever seen,” Campbell said. “So many people in West Texas are in need of assistance. To have a corporate partner to come in and say that they want to help us continue to reach our goals, especially with fresh fruit, is great. We know the summer months are coming up and kids are about to be out of school. We know fruit is going to be a big item that’s needed. It’s very expensive. So we now have fresh apples to hand out to the neighbors that we serve and that’s very important. It’s a great example of how great and kind our community is here in West Texas.”
Holman talked about the importance of having fresh fruit available for everyone.
“Unfortunately, there’s always a need but as we get closer to school being out, it’s nice to have a healthy snack and that they’re not just snacking on junk food,” Holman said. “We’re able to provide them with healthy food. We couldn’t do it without our customers.”
The West Texas Food Bank will also be partnering with Keep Midland Beautiful for an Earth Day event from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. this Saturday at the West Texas Food Bank in Midland, 1601 Westcliff Drive.
The food bank will be giving away 200 trees and tomato plants and there will be vendors for children to talk to about keeping the earth safe.
“That’s a great partnership that we do with Keep Midland Beautiful,” Campbell said. “We come together and have a great celebration at our midland campus. We’ll be handing out trees and tomato plants. There will be tons of different vendors out there doing education on how to take care of earth, where does food come from, how do you eat better and prepare food better, stuff like that. We need to be able to grow food and one way to do that is to do education with a collaborative relationship with other partners in our community. It’s a fun event to teach kids about where food comes from.”
For more information about the West Texas Food Bank and how to donate, go to https://tinyurl.com/mcvsj73p.
