Aunt Millie’s donates 2,400 loaves of bread to Hoosier Hills

The cream-colored Aunt Millie’s Bakeries step van pulled into Hoosier Hills Food Bank parking lot at 9:07 a.m. on a crisp Wednesday morning.

Bloomington branch Manager TJ Simms backed the van toward the delivery entrance, turned it off and opened the back roll-up door. Inside were 3,300 pounds of Butter Top Wheat Bread.

“That’s a lot of bread,” said Julio Alonso, executive director of Hoosier Hills, as Simms unloaded column after column of the donated loaves.

The donation, 2,400 loaves in all, is part of Aunt Millie’s pledge to donate 60,816 loaves to food banks throughout the Midwest.

The family-owned company began the program in 2009 when it pledged to donate 50,000 loaves regionally.

“We pledged 50,000 but donated closer to 60,000,” said Melissa Dunning, Aunt Millie’s marketing director.

The total retail value of this year’s 60,000 loaves is $194,003, according to the company’s press release.

“Large donations like this are kind of rare,” Alonso said. “It sounds like a lot and it is a lot, but 2,400 loaves will go pretty quickly.”

In April, the food bank received a donation of 7,500 pounds of frozen ground pork from Indiana Pork Producers.

Within several weeks, Hoosier Hills had distributed all of it, Alonso said.

Hoosier Hills Food Bank delivers food in a six-county area to nearly 100 nonprofit agencies that feed low-income members of the community.

The agencies feed more than 25,800 individuals each year. Last year, it distributed more than 3.1 million pounds of food, and more than 30 million pounds of food have been distributed since it began in 1982.

As of Oct. 31, Hoosier Hills has already reached 2.6 million pounds of food, up 3 percent from this time last year, Alonso said.

The bread is available to every agency on a first-come, first-served basis. Some agencies were already outside, waiting until the food bank opened at 9:30 a.m.

Al Hoover, who volunteers for the Wednesday Food Pantry of First United Methodist Church, comes to the food bank every Monday and made the trip for the Butter Top Wheat Bread.

“We’re shooting for 240 loaves,” he said, referring to the food pantry.

Every distributor that comes to the food bank is always hard up for bread, Hoover said.

“Aunt Millie’s went out of their way to donate that bread, which is a sizeable amount,”
he said.

When Simms finished unloading, the bread was stacked in 20 columns of 14 racks, taller than everyone present. Inside the food bank, Assistant Director Dan Taylor logged in the donation and asked for the expiration date: Nov. 30.

“That’s a good date,” he said. He estimated that the bread will be gone in a week.