A Food Pantry Spreads Love Through Daily Acts of Kindness

A small rural community about an hour from the City of San Diego known widely for its avocado and citrus groves, Fallbrook is known as “The Friendly Village.” Fallbrook Food Pantry, the town’s only hunger-relief organization, exemplifies friendliness at every level. A recent visit to the pantry was filled with smiles, laughs, and, yes, lots of citrus. In operation since 1991, the Fallbrook Food Pantry serves an average of 400 households per week. To support the community within the four walls of the pantry, in addition to those they serve, the pantry’s team spreads love by showing volunteers they are appreciated.  

One of Fallbrook Food Pantry’s youngest food recipients

Small Acts of Kindness

“We have focused our intentions to make our volunteers feel valuable,” shares Carolina Miller, the pantry’s programs and operations manager. “They are the core of our organization and without them, we wouldn’t be here. Currently, it’s only five staff members, but we get around 100 different volunteers every month that come through our doors. We serve lunch for them at least once a week. One of the staff members or a board member comes and brings lunch for our volunteers of the day. We also have a birthday board where we acknowledge when it’s your birthday and then we send you a birthday card in the mail signed by as many people as we can.”  

Carolina Miller, the pantry’s programs and operations manager

Food Rescue’s Role

It’s these seemingly little things that help everyone involved with the Fallbrook Food Pantry feel valued and cared for. The pantry certainly keeps its volunteers busy with its food rescue schedule. Currently, they rescue food six times a week. They are open Monday through Friday to distribute food. On Saturdays, they sort and glean the rescued food. They rescue about 32,000 pounds of food every month, much of it coming from the Albertsons just a mile or so away.  

“All that food is our biggest blessing,” Carolina explains. “It’s all the extra items that we don’t get from other organizations or growers. We get all that food, we sort through it, and then we give it to our clients. It’s just amazing because it’s always fresh produce and bread, and those are two commodities that everybody wants and sometimes it’s hard to get. Those items get to us through the connections and relationships we have built with Feeding San Diego.”  

Fresh produce packaged for distribution

Local Bounty

The Fallbrook Food Pantry team is incredibly resourceful and works within its community to solve the problem of hunger. The pantry’s case manager works closely with local Marines who live in Fallbrook (Camp Pendleton butts up to the town) to utilize their strength to pick and glean all the local citrus.  

‘We just recovered 1,800 pounds of citrus from somebody’s backyard!” Carolina tells us. “If somebody calls or comes to the pantry and says ‘Hey, I’m new to Fallbrook or I’ve had this grow forever and I don’t know what to do with it,’ we are now we’re able to make a request to get the Marines to go to these groves and pick up for them and then we get all the donations.”  

Spreading Love Year Round

Fallbrook Food Pantry truly exemplifies February’s Spread Love San Diego campaign. Their method serves as a model for what a small community can create if everyone works together.  

Cel, Fallbrook Food Pantry’s receptionist, chats with a food recipient

“We try to spread love the best we can,” says Carolina. “If a client needs to tell us something, because maybe they are a senior who lives alone and don’t have a lot of people to talk with, maybe our receptionist or myself has 5, 10, 15 minutes to hear their story if they want to share. We are always adding some value to our operations with the fact that we are always trying to be kind. All this craziness going on in the world, it’s about serving one client at a time, getting one family fed at a time. We are doing our best, giving good energy, and spreading love.”