Interfaith Food Bank to rebuild loading dock with Walmart donation

A little extra cash is going to make a big difference for the Interfaith Food Bank Society of Lethbridge.

For years, Interfaith has had to juggle resources whenever a truck makes a food delivery. When Interfaith first purchased the building, there was a loading dock in the back.

“But we haven’t been able to use it all this time because the leveller was gone, and all the equipment that goes with it had been removed by the previous owners,” said executive director Danielle McIntyre.

They had to rely on one man, who was trained to run the forklift, to unload a truck parked outside. And if he was out on a call and a truck showed up, he would have to stop what he was doing and return to the building.

“So for years we’ve been hoping that one day we would get the money it would take to upgrade the dock so it could be fully functioning for us,” said McIntyre.

They’ve received $20,224 to upgrade the loading dock, with a retail capacity building grant through the Walmart Foundation’s support of Food Banks Canada.

The grant was part of a greater $2million donation from the Walmart Foundation to Food Banks Canada. The Foundation later kicked in another $2.6 million.

“I’m exceptionally grateful to Walmart and to Food Banks Canada right now,” she said. “It’s going to make a huge improvement to our facility and allow us to really support not just our families, but families throughout southern Alberta.”

They are now installing a hydraulic dock leveller, bumpers and a dock seal. It may be a few weeks still before the upgrades are complete. Once they are, it will mean trucks can now back into the loading dock and be offloaded inside the building. It also means more volunteers will be able to assist when a delivery comes.

“Not every volunteer has the ability to hop on the forklift for us. It allows us to maximize our resources and accept the trucks whenever they can come,” said McIntyre.

Interfaith Food Bank processes about 70,000 pounds of food per month. With a new loading dock, they’ll be able to accept a lot more, she said.

“Having the ability to accept more loads means we can process more food to get it out to more families.”

Interfaith Food Bank has been partnering in a pilot project with the Food Bank Alberta’s Food Share system to be a “hub” for southern Alberta. Smaller rural food banks in the area can get food stocks through Lethbridge, as opposed to paying for truckloads to come from Calgary or Edmonton.

“It’s a means for us to move more food around to more food banks and more food bank families,” said McIntyre. Food banks in smaller communities such as Coaldale are typically “one-room operations,” she said.

“They don’t have the space to accept a truckload or the budget to pay for the transportation on a full truck. By us having a big facility here, with proper infrastructure to accept these loads, then the smaller guys can come in and access stuff through the Food Share system.”

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