Charley Family Shop'n Save donates $50,000 in food vouchers to Westmoreland food bank

A local grocery store owner is pitching in to help residents in need get food amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Charley Family Shop’n Save officials presented $50,000 in food vouchers to the Westmoreland County Food Bank earlier this month, in the form of 2,500 vouchers valued at $20 each.

“It’s a paper coupon that’s good at any of our three stores,” Vice President Tom Charley said. “We knew that we wanted to help out the food bank. People need food right now, and we’re in the public’s eye when it comes to that, so if we can help out, we wanted to do that.”

The Charley family has one store in Murrysville and two in Greensburg.

Food bank executive director Jennifer Miller said the vouchers will be distributed to its partner agencies in the Murrysville and Greensburg areas.

“They won’t necessarily be packed into the food boxes, but the volunteers there will have them to give out,” Miller said.

It’s a welcome boost for the food bank, which boxed and prepared 480,000 pounds of food in April, in addition to altering the way it typically operates.

With social distancing recommendations and the coronavirus spreading rapidly, food bank officials recognized that the traditional distribution methods — food items being handled many times before distribution, often among large groups of volunteers — would not work.

“As an organization that seeks to feed the hungry, we recognize and acknowledge the importance of a healthy community,” Miller said. “We had to make changes to our operations so that we can keep everyone safe — recipients, volunteers and WCFB staff — while still providing an essential service to the community.”

Volunteers have been coming to the food bank’s Delmont warehouse to safely pre-pack pantry food boxes with minimal handling. All of that has come at a cost, though.

“Purchasing boxes, additional food and distributing in this manner is very costly for the organization,” Miller said. “Pandemics are not something you predict in a budget.”

Miller said the community has been very supportive of the food bank in the past, and hoped that additional donations would help offset its new, unforeseen costs.

Giving food bank clients a chance to purchase an additional $20 of groceries certainly helps. Miller said the group has received voucher donations before, “but not to this magnitude.”

Charley said it was an easy decision for his family, despite being the largest donation they’ve ever made, “because of the situation we’re in, and understanding that the food banks are having challenges right now.

“We’ve been in this community for 100 years, so we thought, how can we help any way possible?” Charley said.