Hy-Vee partnership donates peanut butter to Samaritan Center

Jefferson City Hy-Vee Store Director Rod Dolph, second from right, explains to Marylyn DeFeo the 1,000 pounds of peanut butter on the pallet should be enough to make more than 16,000 sandwiches. DeFeo is executive director of the Samaritan Center and, along with food pantry manager Carlos Robinett, at left, accepted delivery of the pantry staple. Second from left is Donovan Sigwerth, assistant director of Hy-Vee. The peanut butter was made available through Hormel Foods' Spread the Smiles campaign.
Jefferson City Hy-Vee Store Director Rod Dolph, second from right, explains to Marylyn DeFeo the 1,000 pounds of peanut butter on the pallet should be enough to make more than 16,000 sandwiches. DeFeo is executive director of the Samaritan Center and, along with food pantry manager Carlos Robinett, at left, accepted delivery of the pantry staple. Second from left is Donovan Sigwerth, assistant director of Hy-Vee. The peanut butter was made available through Hormel Foods' Spread the Smiles campaign.

As part of Hormel Foods' Spread the Smiles campaign, the Fortune 500 company and Hy-Vee partnered to donate 1,000 pounds of peanut butter to the Samaritan Center on Tuesday.

Spread the Smiles is a program intended to help overcome hunger.

Hy-Vee participated in a Skippy sales promotion earlier this year. As a result, it was provided with more than 11,000 pounds of Skippy peanut butter to be distributed among 11 communities in eight states.

Marylyn DeFeo, the founder of the Samaritan Center, said the peanut butter is a welcome addition to the center's food pantry.

The pantry operates four days a week and serves more than 1,600 families. Each of those families - while the supply lasts - will take home a jar of peanut butter when they stop for food, DeFeo said.

Hy-Vee and Schulte's Fresh Foods are good about delivering food to the center, she said. But the nonprofit also has volunteers who use their pickups to travel to the grocery stores and other places to pick up donated food items.

"Staff were just talking the other day," DeFeo said. "We really need to look for a used box truck for ourselves, see if we can get one reasonably priced."

A donor provided a recently completed 4,700-square-foot addition to the center on East McCarty Street.

"We built this because we had stuff scattered all over," she said. "We needed to get it down here."

Businesses allowed the organization to store products at several different sites.

Now, when large quantities of items are donated, the center has plenty of room to store them, she continued.

The Jefferson City Hy-Vee store Director Rod Dolph attended the delivery of the peanut butter to the Samaritan Center.

"They tell me this would make 16,300 peanut butter sandwiches," Dolph said.

This all came about because a sales program Hormel conducted about a year ago was extremely successful, he said.

"We had a lot of Hormel items in our corporate ads and really promoted that in our local trade area," Dolph said. "Peanut butter is a staple that people will always need."

Hy-Vee also supports families at the center by offering "sacks" for purchase at the grocery store, Dolph continued. When the Samaritan Center is low on certain items, it notifies the grocer.

"We put together $5 and $10 bags, based on the needs, that the customer can purchase," Dolph said. "Then we deliver them."

Or, volunteers go to the store to pick them up.

Volunteers picked up about 20 of the bags early Tuesday morning, staff said.