Last week, 15 trailers full of food sat packed and ready to ship out from our food distribution center (FDC) in Lake City, Fla.—but after Hurricane Irma’s impact on the area, several Target stores were closed and couldn’t receive their shipments. It looked like the food would spoil and go to waste—but there was no way Conrad Carwile, the FDC’s inventory management operations manager, and his team were going to let that happen.
He got on the phone with Logan Warren, senior program owner on our Waste Minimization team in Minneapolis, who connected him with partners at Feeding America. Then Conrad and his teammates—including Eric James, CJ Teggart, Andy Stormant, Cecil Goss, Melissa Dotson and Montana Armstrong, with support from the FDC’s Operations team—spent the next few days getting products ready, contacting food banks across Florida and Georgia and making arrangements to ship the food to their locations.
They knew the clock was ticking—the food had to be kept at specific temperatures and arrive before it expired. So they followed the lead of our FDC in Denton, Texas, who’d rerouted some trailers to shelters after Hurricane Harvey earlier this month, and got the trailers shipped out for delivery just in time. Conrad, Logan and their teams’ quick work saved thousands of pounds of food from going to waste, and supplied local organizations with much-needed food for local neighborhoods recovering from the storm.
It’s just one example of how our teams are stepping up to help each other and their communities recover after the devastating hurricanes over the past few weeks. To help, Target pledged a total of up to $4.5 million in cash and in-kind donations that will benefit our team members and several national, local and international relief organizations recovering from the impact. (Read more about that here.)
Meanwhile, our teams across the country continue their efforts to welcome guests back to their stores and help them restock all the necessary supplies. Some team members have flown in from other states to take shifts for local teams while they focus on their own personal affairs.
The efforts are part of Target’s long legacy of supporting our team and communities before, during and after disasters. Learn more about how we support the communities where we do business every day.
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