SALISBURY — In Rowan County, more than 23,000 people live at or below the poverty line. On Thursday, the Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina took another step in its work to address food insecurity in the community with the addition and filling of a large on-site freezer at its Salisbury location.

“Freezer space is very important in food banks, and we don’t have enough of it. So what happens when we have frozen products, and meat products in particular, we want to always be able to take that product and use it to feed people that need it,” said Kay Carter, Second Harvest CEO.

The freezer was built in the organization’s Rowan County site, located on Airport Road, which serves as the food bank’s base for disaster relief supplies as well as a storage area for supplies being distributed to over 100 partner agencies throughout the area. The addition was made possible by support from The Leon Levine Foundation, The Cannon Foundation, the Merances Foundation and the Gene Haas Foundation.

With the addition of the freezer room, the former United Beverages distribution building will also hold one of Second Harvest’s two cold storage facilities, with the other being at the Charlotte location.

“We have relatively large freezers at our Charlotte facility, but we don’t have them anywhere else. So what happens a lot of the time is Smithfield or one of the major meat companies will call and say ‘hey, we’ve got three tractor-trailer loads.’ Well, unless we’re empty in Charlotte we have to take those to off-site storage and we don’t want to do that. We can always get that, but we have to pay for it. So, the idea behind putting the additional capacity here is to take that load off of Charlotte so we can always just accept that,” said Carter.

Carter also said that the organization makes supply runs in between the Charlotte and Salisbury facilities constantly, so that added an additional reason to expand cold storage capabilities in the Salisbury location.

The building itself has been renovated heavily after Second Harvest bought it back in 2022 with financial assistance from Food Lion. Facilities include the cold storage, a drive-thru area for direct community distributions, a “shopping area” for partner agencies and the general storage area, which includes disaster relief supplies, clothes, water, cleaning supplies, food, pet food and any other supplies the food bank keeps in stock.

Food Lion partnered with the agency again as part of its hunger relief campaign, titled “Food Lion Feeds,” and filled the freezer along with other companies who donated approximately a dozen tractor-trailer loads worth of food, including Tyson, Kellogg’s, Meat Factor, Smithfield, Butterball, Action Food Sales, Cargill, Conagra, Double R, Lou’s Kitchen, Nestlé, Purdue, Pilgrim’s and Skinny Butcher.

“It’s been incredibly important to us to be part of our towns and cities, since we started in 1957. It’s something we don’t take lightly. It’s something that we are all passionate about and it fits our purpose. We nourish all families and set them up for success in life,” said Meg Ham, president of Food Lion.

The location on Airport Road serves as the center for Second Harvest Food Bank’s partnerships with 28 programs throughout Rowan County, including Rowan Helping Ministries, Rufty-Holmes Senior Center, Nazareth Children’s Home and the Salvation Army. During the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the organization donated 88 million pounds of food and household items, 3.1 million pounds of which was distributed to agencies in Rowan County.

The organization also serves the surrounding counties of Stanly, Iredell and Cabarrus, which received a total of approximately seven million pounds of supplies.

In regards to the future plans for Second Harvest, Carter said that organization is looking to purchase a large facility in Hickory to expand its operations in the Catawba County area. After that is completed, the organization has plans to expand its current Spartanburg, South Carolina, facility in order to have extra capacity to work in upstate South Carolina.