Last week, we had the opportunity to volunteer alongside our friends at Corbion as part of the team’s annual Pack It Up for Harvesters event. We joined Corbion at the event last year and were thrilled to contribute again this year.
Since 2011, Corbion employees have provided more than 270,000 meals to Harvesters, a food bank that provides food and related household products to more than 620 emergency food pantries, community kitchens, homeless shelters, children’s homes and other not-for-profit agencies throughout northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas.
In addition to our staff, Corbion teamed up with Sosland Publishing and Winco Fireworks, a wholesale fireworks distributor that operates the warehouse adjacent to Corbion’s distribution center in Grandview, Missouri. Together, we packed up more than 10,000 holiday meals for families throughout the Kansas City metro area and beyond. It was inspiring to see so many individuals come together to make a difference.
As food ingredient marketers, we love seeing our clients do their part to help fight hunger in the communities where they live and work as well as across the world. In the U.S. alone, more than 40 million people, including 12 million children and five million seniors, struggle to get enough to eat each day. As a result, companies like Corbion are making conscious efforts to put sustainable practices into action while fostering goodwill among staff.
Taking time out of the busy workweek to help those in need is just one of the many ways food ingredient companies can build customer loyalty, recruit and retain employees, and differentiate their brands from their competition. At the end of the day, it’s about more than making monetary donations. Rather, it’s about engaging and inspiring employees to be part of something bigger — and there’s nothing more rewarding than that.
What type of corporate social engagement efforts does your company deploy? Comment below to share your thoughts on how you inspire your team to pay it forward.