60,000 Pounds and a Phone Call: How FoodSourceDFW Landed Two Truckloads of Quaker Products

Two full truckloads, about 60,000 pounds, came into FoodSourceDFW this month. It started the way most of our food work starts: with someone picking up the phone.

There is a part of food rescue that never makes it into photographs. Before any truck is loaded, before any pallet is moved, someone has to make the call. Then another call, and another. Most of those calls end in a polite "not right now." A few end in "let me check." And every so often, one ends in something like two full truckloads of food.

This month, that persistence paid off for FoodSourceDFW, the Memnosyne Institute’s food-access initiative serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Through steady outreach, our team member Todd secured two truckloads of Quaker products, mostly beverages, totaling about 60,000 pounds.

What 60,000 Pounds Looks Like

Numbers like 60,000 pounds can be hard to picture. It is two trucks' worth of product, enough to line a warehouse aisle floor to ceiling, pallet after pallet.

Beverages matter more in food work than people often realize. Food pantries tend to be stocked with shelf-stable staples like canned goods, pasta, and rice. Drinks are heavy and bulky, so they show up on donation lists less often. A donation built mostly on beverages fills a real gap on the shelves of the organizations that receive it.

The Work Behind the Trucks

For months, Todd has been working the phones, calling companies, distributors, and logistics partners and asking a simple question: do you have surplus product that could reach people who need it? It is unglamorous work. Most days it produces nothing a donor would ever see.

But it builds something. Every call adds a name to a network, and a company that says “not this quarter” today may say “we have two trucks” next season. This summer, the same kind of patient outreach brought FoodSourceDFW 350 pallets of donated flour bound for border communities and the Navajo Nation. The Quaker donation is the next link in that chain.

There is a quiet lesson in it, one we come back to often at Memnosyne. Generosity is usually already out there. Companies frequently have more than they can use and would rather see it reach a table than a landfill. What is often missing is the connection: someone willing to make the call, and an organization ready to receive the answer.

Where It Goes

From here, the work turns to distribution: moving the product through FoodSourceDFW’s network of partner organizations to the communities it serves. Every pallet that leaves the warehouse stocks a pantry shelf, supplies a community meal, or ends up in a family’s refrigerator.

What Comes Next

The phones are not going quiet. Todd’s outreach continues every week, and our team is building new relationships, including with community groups we hope to serve more closely in the months ahead.

If your company has surplus food or beverages looking for a good home, we would love to hear from you. Sometimes the whole story starts with one phone call, and this time we would be glad to be the ones answering.

The Memnosyne Institute is a Dallas-based nonprofit co-founded in 2008 by Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk and Joshua Raymond Frenk. We support positive, peaceful global collaboration across seven centers of knowledge, including Environment, Science and Technology and Global and Social Outreach, with international chapters in Japan, and Mexico. To learn more or support this work, please visit our Support Us page or contact us directly.