 Aloha and welcome to non-profits mean business where we will delve into services provided in our community by non-profit organizations. I'm your host Krista Stadler joined today by Ron Mizetani with Hawaii Food Bank. Aloha, Ron. Thank you for joining me. Thank you, Krista. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. I have a lot of things to talk about some very prevalent issues, but if you would just briefly let us know, you know, how you came about joining Food Bank as president and chief and chief executive officer. Thank you. It's been quite a journey to get to this point and I'm very grateful for this opportunity. It's been almost two years. Next month makes two years. I was actually where you were for 33 years at KHON delivering the news. It was a little different career adventure for me, but yet at the same time it really wasn't. The transition has been almost seamless for me and a lot of it have to do with the fact that I worked with a lot of different segments and fragments of our community, whether it be stakeholders at the legislature or the community neighborhood board meetings, things that I covered in the past. So I had a broad range of what was happening in our town and relationships that I built through the years. So that helped in my transition to the Food Bank. I had also been a board member of Easter Seals for almost 10 years. So that was my exposure, if you will, to the non-profit world and fell in love with the non-profit world. And it was an advocate for the disabled for many years continued to be one. And now I'm an advocate for the hunger and the subject of hunger. So it was meant to be. And the opportunity came forward two years ago. And after 33 years of delivering the news, I'm now making a difference in a different way. That's so awesome. I love it when people reach out with their passion. Well, I know you had an event happening this weekend that we were going to talk about today that unfortunately, I'm going to let you share what's happening and update regarding that. Well, this is certainly one of our biggest fundraisers of the year. And that's the Great Chefs Fight Hunger event, which we host here at our property in our warehouse. We turn this into just a gala event. And it's quite a scene to see our warehouse turned into something so beautiful and so festive. We have restaurants from all across the state of Wahoo. And we have over 500 guests here enjoying a night of good food and great entertainment. Henry Capono, who was supposed to be performing with us that day that evening. But because of the coronavirus, we had to make a decision. We made it last Friday to postpone. And it was it was actually not a very difficult decision to make once we learned the facts and not get too caught up in in the hysteria of what's happening today because what is happening today is very much so an event. My apologies for that. But it's something that we needed to understand and the impact it could have had if someone were to come to our property and not and not know that they were ill and go away with being ill and others affected by that. So at the end it was a decision that we had to make and it was a responsible one. And now that we see other events are unfolding and cancelling, including some major events and closures of parks and Disneyland. It's this is unprecedented. This is something we've never seen before. And I think in transition to hopefully our next subject, it's going to impact us in a way that we've never seen before in Hawaii as well. And the face of hunger will change in the next few weeks. I do want to talk about that. I want to get into maybe after we talk about that I want to get into your operations and what it takes to run it and all the different pieces of the puzzle. I don't know whether it's to maybe we should talk about how you feel at this point this pandemic is going to affect you from a from the food bank standpoint or some things that you're maybe thinking about now. Oh yeah. Last 24 hours have been a lot of thoughts and quite frankly a sleepless night. The World Health Organization as we all know is now defining this as a pandemic and we anticipated that was happening. And so we had to make some decisions even before that declaration and definition was made, because we know it's going to impact our inventory in a very significant way. You know, as is right now we serve one in eight people go to bed hungry in Hawaii every single day. That number will expand as as this continues. We anticipate people will start to lose their jobs because of the economy that will include whether it be in the visitor industry, whether it be just business as you and in general small business and even corporations will start laying people off if this continues. And frankly there is no end in sight at this point and that's part of the fears of this unknown virus is there's so many unknowns, but we do anticipate it'll impact the amount of people that have needs. We're already seen that what goes out the door every single day our inventory has been impacted already the demands have increased. My biggest fear besides inventory, which is what we base our day with operations wise is how much supply of food we have. Can we match the demand it's simple economics even with food supply and demand. Can you tell me a little bit is I've actually been to your facility and I'll talk to you more about that it was a great experience and we're going back in April hopefully if they're going to let us come together. Can you let me know a little bit more about you how do you how where does most of the majority of your food come from I mean I always think in my mind oh it's coming from individual people but it sounds like that's not necessarily the case. Individuals. In fact, you know why we were unique in so many different ways and our food bank operations is unique compared to our other sisters and brothers out in the rest of the country. So food bank operations and how they get their food. We do have food drives we do rely on on the efforts of our community and our generosity of our donors, whether it be a coalition of bankers or in during our food drive season we have different ways that we gather food. We also receive food from the letter carries event that you take part in May when you when you put your food in those blue bags plastic bags they eventually come here. We also have relationships with our retailers and our you know the safe ways and the times of the world and tomorrows and and all of the local stores as well as the big stores of Target and Walmart and Walgreens. They also assist in donations, and then we get donations from our farmers and our growers. So we do get our share of fresh produce, but it's usually at the end of life. What we don't have we have to purchase. And in this case when there's an event, whether it be a tsunami or hurricane or on a partial government shutdown, or even now the coronavirus, we have to make up what we don't have in stock in inventory. That's not coming in as a donation. We have to purchase and that's where heavy costs come in. Okay, so with the grocery stores. What what inventory are they passing on to you things that are close to expiration can products, you know. Is that the type of thing that they decide okay we're going to go ahead and pass this on to the food bank and when do they make that decision or how do they make that decision. You know they're they also are evolving and how they do business this is before this event even came about their their tightening their belts as well so what we may have seen five years ago. We're not seeing that kind of donation flow like in the past, but yes they are giving their non perishables that are ending life for or best buy dates. There's also if a fruit or vegetable does not look pretty, we get that as well. And also the end of dairy products that may be coming to an end of life on the shelf may not necessarily mean that it's not good for somebody at home and safe to eat. The guidelines that we have to follow, and that's when you came in and sort through food and look through the cans make sure they're not compromised. That's the kind of food that we have from our donors from our retail product partners. And I was also very curious when I was there about how many items that were not necessarily what I would think of as food you know baby food I believe there was dog food they were there were maybe non perishable items. But tell me about some of those items normal people wouldn't think that would be held at your facility. Yeah, we do have it's not just food. We do have our share of of hygiene products for women. Like you said we do have cat and dog food we have we're close partners with the whiny main society. Those who have needs at home also have pets and so we do supply and provide food for that as well. We're grateful for our partners from CBS and others who do have excess inventory to provide our way whether it be, like I said, a feminine hygiene hygiene project with the toothpaste toothbrushes. Those are the items that a lot of people don't think about that the food bank may provide and so yes but those two we have to make sure that they're safe they're not open they're not compromised. They're not leaking whether it be a detergent or so or even a dog food that's not open we don't want to be sending anything out the door that we wouldn't consume ourselves. Alright, so you've got from what I understand correct me if I'm wrong the one large warehouse. Is that correct here on the island, but then you have a multitude of different distribution points as well. Is that correct. Let me just back up because maybe people don't understand you think about food bank you think this is where they come to gather I mean to get what they need. We have a 25,000 square foot facility here in Malpuna Puna. We gather the food here. We house it we store it we inventory to make sure it's safe. We have over 200 partner agencies that actually do the distributing so it's your soup kitchen your church's. IHS Salvation Army, they actually either come here to gather the food for distribution to those in need, or we actually will depending on the need or or the size of the distribution effort, we will deliver it to them. For example, today is a very big distribution point at Vineyard. Maybe if you've been under the freeway you've seen a lot of people congregating right now at about at about noon. Maybe 500 people that is we are partnered with surfing the nations and they help us distribute that food. So maybe 500 people are there gathering their food and their box of food but it's really feeding over 3000 people. So from a staffing perspective, they're at the warehouse. What how many staff members do you have? So we have a warehouse in Oahu. Yes, and we have warehouse on Kauai that serves the island of Kauai. We also have partner agencies and distribution partner agencies on Maui Maui food bank in Hawaii County at the food basket. But here on Oahu we have between Oahu and Kauai we have about 55 full time employees. And if you think about what we do, it's a big staff, but it's not a big staff. So we were like tremendously on our volunteers like you, like businesses who come here and help us sort through the food to make sure they're safe. We train you folks so that you know what to look for, what is good and what isn't good. We also put our eyes on it as well. But without our volunteer base, which is 1000 strong, we couldn't do what we do. So really it's a machine and if anybody has a chance to come visit what we do, you will be blown away. If you could visualize a million pounds of food leaving the warehouse every month. Yeah, and that's what we do. It is a machine. A million pounds of food. It's a machine. It's something else. Just a little small part I saw and was part of was so well organized and we had a great time doing it and you know, I thought it was great. So someone, how does someone qualify or if they're in need, what steps do they take? Access to all. Access to all. We do not discriminate. And you know, I'll be very honest, there's a perception or misperception of that. That way, Food Bank serves the homeless. That is true. But it's a very small population of who we serve and who we provide food for. You know, we provide food for our working families, our kupuna, our keiki at school pantries. We provide food for domestic violence shelters and domestic violence survivors, our veterans. It's a very broad reach that impacts those who have needs. The hunger in the face of hunger can change, as we all know, overnight. We saw it during, we see it during disasters. We see it if somebody loses a job, someone loved one loses a job or passes. It can be a partial government shutdown. When the government shutdown happened, we had Coast Guard personnel and their families in need of food. They never thought they would need food. We had TSA workers in uniform coming here to our warehouse in tears, asking for help because they never thought they would have to stand in line for food. So it's important to understand the community, to understand who is being serviced by Hawaii Food Bank. And as this coronavirus pandemic continues, I'm afraid to say that we will probably see a lot more people who will have needs. Well, thank you. We're going to take a little break and come back with Ron to talk more about the Hawaii Food Bank. And we appreciate you staying tuned. Thank you so much. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Being a lawyer has many aspects, and I try to cover them every time I do a program of law across the sea. Not everything has to do with law or being a lawyer per se. Some of it has to do with the people you meet, the things you see, the places you visit. And that's what I try to combine in Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Thank you for watching Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to Non-profits Mean Business 2. I'm here with Ron Mizetani from Hawaii Food Bank. And we are going to continue to discuss the white food banks operations and more currently what they are doing to help prepare for the coronavirus situation. Aloha, Ron. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you. If you could talk, I want to really have people understand from a cost perspective, what does it take for a container of food? What does it cost for a container of food? And how long does that last? A whole container. That depends. Yeah, so it depends on what's in the container. Okay. And, you know, if you can keep this in mind too, when we purchase food, we can purchase it locally as well. There's some heavier costs with that. We can also purchase from the mainland because of our Feeding America affiliation. And it's a network of food banks that requires us to be very transparent with our paperwork and safety, etc. We have relationships with stores. We have relationships that can stretch the dollar further. So if you were to go to a store tomorrow and or tonight and spend $20, what I could do with $20 based on our relationships that we have goes a lot further. That being said, if I were to order a 40 foot container of say corned beef, which is what we currently are doing right now. Which is that I can look at it. I'm looking at an order right now. It's about 41,000 pounds of corned beef that's on its way in a single container. The cost of that is about $100,000. And that's just for the food. If you were to add the cost of the trucking and also the shipping you're talking about an additional $45,000 right now. I just had to make a decision on purchasing food. And we are bringing in about 200,000 pounds of food in preparation for Corona virus. That's going to cost us over $252,000. So, and that's in shipping and trucking costs. So if you can imagine, that's part of our daily expenses or at least our budget. Sure. And that has to be our budget changes. I mean, depending on the needs, so we have to project what we're going to be needing. But also prepare for the unexpected, which as we all know in Hawaii, whether it be a natural disaster or a shutdown or in this case, what we're dealing with now with the pandemic, it can happen overnight. Absolutely. And then to keep in mind, if we're ordering something from, say, Minnesota, which we often do, it takes four to six weeks before it actually gets here. My good. We order something from CNS down the street, and we'll get it here in a day. But we're really at the mercy of shipping and that long journey across the Pacific Ocean. So we are our geographic isolation really puts even more challenges when it comes to operating and projecting our needs. And that's something that thankfully have a staff way smarter than me that can help do all of that logistic planning. But again, we have to make decisions sometimes before an event even happens, if that makes sense. Oh, I can't even imagine how things do happen, even if the stock market crashes, which doesn't have to do with us physically, it still impacts the economy. And how much food, say, per week or per month goes out? So if you're bringing, if you're just curious. So just on a daily basis, about 40 to 60,000 pounds of food leaves our warehouse to those in need. That's only on Oahu. So annually, we between us, excuse me, Kaua'i branch, Maui County, the Maui Food Bank, which serves Moloka'i and Lana'i as well, and Hawaii County Food Basket, which serves Kona and Hilo. The Food Bank Network of Hawaii distributes about 17 million pounds of food annually, with the majority of it coming here from Hawaii. Last year, I think we did just over 11 million or just under 11 million. And a lot of that is in fresh produce, over three and a half million pounds of food in fresh produce. Strongly believe that just because you're hungry and you have needs doesn't mean you cannot have healthy options. And that's something we want to be a part of the conversation with and drive that conversation. One of the things that I did when I first got here because I looked at what we're doing and how we were having an impact on nutrition. And if we want to preach good health, we have to be part of the solution. I would never take spam off the floor, nor would I take ramen, but we're no longer purchasing spam and ramen. And the donation absolutely will accept it. And we will distribute it because the needs are great, but if I were to spam off the floor, I would not have a job. But at the same time, we have to, not in Hawaii, because I love spam too. But the reality is we want to have healthier options, proteins, vegetables, and all of those items that we really all need to stay healthy. Absolutely. I was investigating some of your special programs and one of them is your senior farmers market. And then you have a couple senior program, the Food for Kiki program and the Ohana Produce Plus. Would you like to talk about those specific programs? Any of them? Well, each of those are very special and very important to our mission and the mission we serve. The food that we distribute to the community goes out in what we call Ohana distributions. And it's really where a big group comes like today at Paloma Settlement and under the Viaduct there at the church, Nassamoan Church. We also have a big distribution out at Angel Network Charity, Angel Network, which is out by East Honolulu. You may see the long line of people there. Those are what we call Ohana drops. And they include non-perishables, our produce, if we have frozen foods, things that we can move that single day and get them out to those in need. One of the more, they're all important. But one area that we really focus a lot of our strategy and efforts on is feeding our Kiki. And we're going to see this with this coronavirus. If this impacts, anyway, closing our schools, you're going to see a lot more families that rely on schools for the only meal of the day. So what we'd launched in May of 2018 was an initiative, basically like a school pantry, and we partner with schools across the DOE, asking them and letting them know we will supply the food. We will supply the inventory of food. And we'll even help you with cupboard space and cupboards. And if we have to buy a refrigerator, Hoy Food Bank was going to do that. All we ask of you is to have a location for us to distribute it with one of our partners that in the area. It took a while for it to launch, frankly, which we found to be baffling at first. But as we got into more schools and the administrators who were open-minded and understood that they had needs, their students were falling asleep. They were having a hard time concentrating. More and more schools signed on to it. And as of today, we are in over 30 schools across Oahu and Kauai and growing, but growing out carefully. We want to be able to sustain that. We don't want to open a school pantry and not have food for the children. And we've noticed and we've heard testimony from administrators and educators that they've already seen a change in behavior, in learning, in attention spans. And that's because food is fuel. And sometimes I think decision makers, and I say that with all due respect, because many of them are my friends, but sometimes I think they lose sight of that. And food needs to be a part of the conversation when it comes to preparedness, when it comes to resilience, and when it comes to the responsibilities of all. Hawaii Food Bank will always respond if we have food, but we do not have an endless supply of food. And I think there's also this expectation that, oh, that's okay. The food bank's got it. We will. It will do everything we can be very creative, but without our donor support of our community and we're so very thankful for that. And we cannot function without donations cannot function without, without help from our community. And, and we don't take that for granted, because everybody has a choice on who they support. Well, would you please share your website? You can just Google Hawaii Food Bank, but you know, go ahead. But if, if you go to HawaiiFoodBank.org, it's very easy website to navigate. We've really made an effort to, to make it something that where it's easy as if you're want to learn more about what we do our mission. We see what we do our 990s. If you want to see what we're very transparent with, with what we do the monies that we do get donated, you know, out of every dollar 95 cents goes right back into our mission. And that's something that we take very pride much pride in, because not everybody can say that. And the charity navigator understands that that is our commitment. We have, you know, recognized us for that being that efficient with with funds, and how we are efficient with with our operations. It's, it's like you've like you've seen it's something that that requires an army to do and to execute every single day. And when in days in crisis like what we're experiencing right now, we need support from from anybody who has a capacity. Because when we're in the midst of a crisis, the last thing we're thinking about is a donation. And I totally understand that we want to prepare our families. But at the same time, I do ask and humbly ask to think about others who may be in need because it could be you tomorrow. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I wanted to just share. I know we feel like we're all so heavy about everything that's going on, but I just wanted to share a picture of our group. This is my staff and some of the folks I don't think everybody's in that picture some of them and we're doing something else, but we had a great time. I think it's definitely. So there's our great crew. And do you have folks like our group there every single day doing that? Is that a daily event? We'd like to. Sometimes it doesn't happen because we can't do it with our staff alone. We need groups like that. Basically what you just showed was a picture of our salvage area where we have our donated items and you literally went box through box. Good bye. The reason why we put so much effort in that program right there is because we want to get the food out on the floor for distribution, but we want to make sure it's safe. We want to make sure nothing's got a puka in it or dusted or so old. So people just empty their cupboards and we understand that and we dispose of food that is not safe for your grandma to eat. So we thank you. No, no, thank you. Thank you. I'm so sorry your event had to be canceled, but I know when you're able to do it again it'll be awesome and I'll be able to actually have enough time to prepare to attend it because I'll know about it soon. I'll know about it when it's going to be appreciated. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for joining us. We hope we have inspired you to find a way to give back to our community by supporting a cause you are passionate about. Thanks, Ron.