Green is here along with Robert sawchuck
there was a business director of the
BASF Corporation good morning to both of
you morning thank you for having us
Brian we know the food bank even in the
best of times there's a lot for you to
do the the community really needs your
services but when Harvey came around it
really changed the dynamic of what your
organization does how so well the food
bank is our core is we're really
logistics you know we receive donations
of surplus food from all over the
country and we're distributing it works
out about eight tractor-trailer loads a
product through a network of about 1200
partners we distribute through and we
just doing that on a daily basis and
after a storm where instead of the
normal food insecure population who
we're trying to work with it can be tens
of thousands hundreds of thousands of
more households who never thought they
would need help
suddenly they do and so will we already
have this distribution infrastructure
with all these voluntary partnerships
that gives us the ability to act as you
know just distribution network to really
help families in flooded houses or
helping the neighborhoods get to
recovery and as we go through an
extended period of time where the
households that are having these
elevated expenses while they're in
recovery mode we can help them out long
term so we try and gear up and
dramatically increase our output after a
storm and how dramatically did it
increase after Harvey
so for the first two months after the
storm we were running at about three
times our normal output rate we had some
days that hit as many as a million
pounds of distribution in a single day
that's an amazing amount and you can do
without partnerships you have
partnerships all over the place and BASF
is one of those partnerships you're on
the board Robert yes I am so you know
about the needs of this community and
what is necessary for partnerships to
come together and make it work
absolutely I've been able to work with
the board and with the food bank for the
last several years now and part of it is
is great the BSF is very tied to the
Houston community and the surrounding
areas and they look at this as an
opportunity for us to to come in and do
something special with the food bank and
when when the hurricane hit I had the
opportunity to bring my family and and
volunteer after
and one thing that struck me is just the
massive amounts of donations of the
parking lot was absolutely just filled
with pallets of donations from people
the warehouse was was full all the
aisles were full we rented additional
warehouse space but the one thing I saw
in all of this was the amount of I guess
hazardous energy you know the slips
trips and falls or one of these things
that are one of the biggest parts of a
highest level of safety problems in
corporate America and I saw these
pallets and donations and foods and
everything there and that thought well
maybe I can take the resources from from
BSF bringing to the food bank and help
out with that need to help with all the
volunteers and all the staff and
everybody there to make sure that that
environment was completely safe and
Brian how important is it when you know
you're gonna really up your maximum
output you've got to do all of this
stuff and you have a partner like BASF
on the board and as a contributor as a
partner to help make that environment
safer so you can do be more efficient in
what you do well it is a big deal we
have as many as a thousand or more
volunteers working with us in the state
you know in a single day and that's just
a lot of people running around that are
not used to it and you you can't have
given them two weeks training because
they're only there for that one day and
so trying to create an environment that
is as safe as possible it is very
important and as Robert pointed out
we're busy that you you go in that
facility and there's all these forklifts
going around there's trucks there's
pallet jacks there's a kitchen equipment
we're making hot meals we've got product
moving carousels and things so there's
lots of things for us to focus on and
when we have partners like BASF who have
expertise in certain areas so PSF is a
chemical company safety is a really big
deal if you're a chemical company so
they've developed a great deal of
expertise and so they can come in and do
an audit of us and then help us identify
weak areas for us to improve and we
actually had about 15 changes that we
made given the input that BAS BASF was
able to give us so that we can make sure
that we're creating a safe and
environment as we possibly can so it's
unintended consequence of Harvey really
kind of elevated he made things a little
bit more focused for you to be able to
kind of see what's going on and from
that you've now created a better safer
environment
the food bank folks absolutely but it
also goes both ways there are very few
industries that can wrap up and three
times the output with virtually no
notice so our team went in and said we
need to learn from the food bank as well
and they took away learnings to say you
know how if we have to ramp up how do we
scale the way that the food bank did in
a safe way because the learning went
both ways and that was a very positive
outcome of the whole experience it's
another one of our Harvey related
stories we want people to understand the
food bank is always acting we know how
busy they are any chance we can get to
bring the food bank on to talk about the
need for you to donate volunteer all of
those things we want you to do so Brian
Robert thank you for coming in BSF
thumbs up information on our website as
well so people can get hooked in and
come down and be one of their thousands
of volunteers helping you do what you do
thank you thank you very much thank you
very much thank you
hey just ahead I look toward our special