Church outreach is built on peanut butter
Occasionally, someone drawn by the smell of peanuts roasting will happen to stumble up to the door of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints located on the north side of Houston, just south of FM 1960 and a few blocks west from Interstate 45.
The church’s Houston Peanut Butter Cannery stands next door to the house of worship — and pumps out about 907,000 jars of the popular sandwich spread each year, using high-tech equipment suited for a high-volume operation.
Peter Polis, who serves as the manager of the facility, has to explain to visitors that the product is not for sale.
“The peanut butter produced here is not available to the public,” he said. “You can’t buy it.”
And he warns guests before they taste the product: “Be careful when you feed this to your family, because they won’t ever want any other type of peanut butter.”
Instead, Polis explains, the cannery is an integral component of the church’s outreach program, which includes providing food to those in need, assisting with finding employment and offering family services, like personal counseling.
Before assuming the post two years ago, Polis worked at the church’s tomato soup cannery in Denver.
He said that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints once operated 53 canneries across the United States in 2000, designed to help member families store food and provide a way to give to those in need.
“The whole concept was to teach self-reliance and to care for the poor and needy,’ he said.
Today Polis said there are only six canneries left — and Houston is home to the only peanut butter factory in the church system. Jars from this facility travel to churches around the country for distribution.
Inside, the factory is whirling with activity. Roasted peanuts work their way through an assembly line, losing their shells, getting crushed and mixing with sugar until the resulting mixture is piped into jars, which are then labeled and packaged into boxes.
“It’s a pretty simple process,” Polis said.
He explained that there are three different labels that go onto the containers — and it all depends on who makes the peanut butter and for which cause.
Every year, about 408,000 jars are reserved for the church’s needs, and 474,000 go to the community — through the Houston and Montgomery County food banks.
Church members are invited to make the product for themselves to store in their own families pantries. They also work in the factory to create peanut butter for the “bishop’s storehouse,” a resource center for those in need, which is stocked and managed by the church’s leader.
“It’s kind of like a grocery store without a register,” Polis said.
It’s up to the bishop to decide if a family needs help — and to provide two weeks of food to those who do.
The production complex is also is used for “humanitarian canning,” Polis added.
He explained that peanut butter is an ideal product for charitable operations like the Houston Food Bank.
“Peanut butter is high in protein, and it’s shelf stable,” he said.
The food bank purchases peanuts — and the church donates the time, overhead equipment and labor required for producing the jars of peanut butter. Individual volunteers, congregations and area corporations provide volunteer labor in the production line.
When Houston was hit with serious floods in May, the cannery went into overdrive, making more peanut butter for families in the city.
Mayor Annise Parker made a request for increased support to the Houston Food Bank, and the church responded by donating an additional eight pallets of peanut butter to the nonprofit.
“Our peanut butter is an ideal product for this type of emergency,” Polis said.
Stan Edde, chief operating officer for the Houston Food Bank, said the organization has enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“We buy the peanuts, and they do all the rest,” he said. “Our relationship goes back years and years.”
He said that last year, the church donated 32,000 cases, which helped feed 234,000 families.
“That’s a lot of peanut butter helping a lot of families,” he said. “This is such a great item, providing protein.”
The Houston Food Bank also gives peanut butter to children to take from school on Fridays for the weekend, through the Backpack Buddy program — adding jars to 11,000 backpacks a week. The program provides childfriendly, nonperishable food items to many children who otherwise would go home from school to meager, if any, meals.
“That jar of peanut butter goes farther than helping one child — it often feeds a whole family,” Edde said.
Volunteers work for four-hour shifts, and a staff of five or more operators from the church, help out.
“We run around the clock to watch the equipment, do lab testing and make sure everything turns out smoothly,” Polis said.
Clyde Black, humanitarian coordinator for the church, said that a number of corporations send volunteers to help with the effort. “It’s easier to recruit from the top down than the bottom up,” he said. “The corporations schedule their charitable days a year in advance.”
Still, he said more volunteers are needed to keep the facility fully staffed. He hopes more individuals will join in the effort.
Polis said that anyone can come in and volunteer — however, he believes that many Houstonians still don’t know the facility exists.
“The church keeps a low profile,” he said. “They’re just doing what’s right — helping people out.”