Cass-Clay Creamery on Thursday made a major milk donation to Great Plains Food Bank, donating nearly 25,000 cartons of shelf-stable “Giving Cow” milk.
The single-serve, eight-ounce cartons of 2% milk have a shelf life for up to a year.
Cass-Clay Creamery General Manager Johnny Campos at Great Plains Food Bank, July 27, 2023. (Rusty Halvorson/KFGO)
The food bank says milk is one of the most requested items from its network of food pantries. Johnny Campos, general manager of the Cass-Clay Creamery manufacturing facility in Fargo, says “Giving Cow” milk is the perfect fit.
“A lot of food banks don’t have refrigeration, it’s expensive. And now we have a product that they can use and really even hold on to up to a year, and it gives them a lot of flexibility on space and also to be able to donate it out, and work with whatever other organizations they’re working with, too. So now, this can sit here for a month and they can send it to Medora next month and it’ll still be good product.”
Campos says “Giving Cow” milk adds flexibility to the supply chain with no refrigeration necessary.
“My yard guy came in yesterday. And he goes ‘Johnny, I really need to talk to you.’ So I’m like, oh, this sounds, this sounds like bad news coming. So, he goes, ‘the donation milk, the reefer was turned off.’ And I’m going, ‘Ricky, don’t worry about it.’ That’s the whole point. You know, it gives flexibility to the shippers, to the warehouses. In our normal business, a reefer going down, that is very bad news. But in this instance, it just really highlighted how versatile this product can be.”
Cass-Class Creamery partnered with Hornbacher’s for the donation, which operates eight grocery stores in the Fargo-Moorhead and West Fargo area.
Now in its 39th year, the Great Plains Food Bank serves as North Dakota’s only food bank. Its partner network includes 213 food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, and other charitable feeding programs operating in 99 communities across N.D. and Clay County, Minn. Since 1983, the Great Plains Food Bank has distributed more than 200 million meals to children, seniors, and families in need.
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