Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – One local grocery store has made a huge donation of food, cleaning supplies, and other items that will greatly benefit Catholic Charities Maine and its customers this holiday season.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
Last Friday. Graves Shop ‘N Save donated 16 pallets of food – valued at about $15,000 – to Catholic Charities Maine/Aroostook Home Supplies and Food Bank. Students in the commercial driver’s license program at the Loring Job Corps Center loaded the pallets into one of the school’s tractor trailers and delivered it to the Caribou food bank. Participating in the project were, from left: Job Corps students Mike Elliott, Dan Wadleigh, Marlon Williams and Roger Niles, instructor.
Last Friday, Graves Shop ‘N Save donated 16 pallets of food – valued at about $15,000 – to the area food bank.
“When the IGA store [Smythe’s] closed in July,” said Greg Graves, who owns the grocery store with his brother, Bob, “we purchased the inventory from that store. It was an awful lot of inventory, and between July and now, we’ve gone through a fair amount of it, but there was still a lot of product there.
“Every week we’d have store meetings with our managers to talk about things we could do for in-store excitement and to help the community, and thought this donation would be a good opportunity,” he said. “This is a far bigger project than we’ve undertaken for quite some time, but everybody thought – looking at the time of year and knowing what’s going on with the hard winter coming – that this would be a wonderful opportunity for us to do something not just for Presque Isle but for the county.”
Graves said items include both non-perishable and frozen foods.
“It’s all great product,” he said, “and hopefully it will go a long way.”
Dixie Shaw, program director for Catholic Charities Maine/Aroostook Home Supplies and Food Bank, said the donation was one of the biggest gifts made to the organization.
“We’re going into our holiday season and what people are anticipating to be one of the hardest winters we’ve faced in a long time due to fuel costs and gasoline prices,” she said. “The only place that people can cut their budget is typically their food budget. They can’t cut back on their heat any further than they have, or they can’t stop putting gasoline in their car.
“Where they can cut is their food budget, and many people don’t have enough food … especially our elderly, our most vulnerable people, our disabled people, our unemployed people, and our single parents,” said Shaw. “This is so exciting to us and we are so thankful and grateful to the Graves brothers because this is going to get us over that hump, and put us into a fairly good position starting the winter.”
With the addition of pantries in Ludlow, Orient and Danforth, Shaw said the local food bank serves 21 pantries throughout Aroostook County.
“We have 21 pantries that we serve on a monthly basis,” she said. “They come into our warehouse and we provide them with food so that they can operate efficiently and effectively in each of their areas. We served over 26,000 people through those pantries last year … over 9,000 households.”
Shaw purchases food from the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn with “limited dollars.”
“I may have the money available, but oftentimes they don’t have the available food,” she said. “The other challenge we have is that toward the end of the year, we run out of funds and then we are really trying to shake the trees to get as much as we can to get food out to people.
“This donation is not only an immediate gift that will be added to our food storage, but it’s also saving the limited dollars that I have to spend to purchase this type of food,” said Shaw. “When you’re talking about a donation of $15,000, that’s a significant savings of our food dollars. That will allow us to stretch them further into the year which is a huge help to us.”
With so many “great things going on this type of year” like the recent Presque Isle Rotary Auction, Graves said the company was looking for “something big to do.”
“This was the perfect opportunity,” he said. “My brother and I had stores all throughout Maine, and when the opportunity came to sell our stores, we always hoped and dreamed about being able to concentrate where our roots are. We love Aroostook County and we want to be here forever. It’s a good feeling to be able to do something of this magnitude for the customers who have kept us in business since 1935 in a tough climate.”
“It’s heartwarming to see a business that’s been in Aroostook County forever – in the food business – to give back to the needy people who can’t necessarily come in and shop at this time,” said Shaw. “It’s a powerful message.”
In addition to the gift of food, Graves Shop ‘N Save has donated racking and shelving units from the Smythe’s IGA store.
“We’ve gotten thousands and thousands of dollars worth of racking and displays … things that will help us in our thrift store in Caribou,” said Shaw. “All proceeds help us offset the cost of running our food bank.”
Students in the commercial driver’s license program at the Loring Job Corps Center loaded the pallets into one of the school’s tractor trailers. Along with instructor Roger Niles, participating students included Marlon Williams, Mike Elliott, and Dan Wadleigh.
“This was such a big donation,” said Shaw, “that it would have taken us about three trips with a smaller truck to come into Presque Isle and pick up. With our limited resources and manpower, I contacted Loring Job Corps and they said they’d be glad to help us. The students were given a hands-on learning experience … how to use pallet jacks, be on the loading docks and actually load a truck. It was a win-win situation for everybody.”
Graves said he hoped this donation would be the start of a “beautiful relationship” between the grocery store and Catholic Charities Maine.
