The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a massive disruption to supply chains around the country, and many organizations are left with excess inventory with no place to go. Harbor Foodservice is one such organization that was hit hard, with the closing of the restaurants and other institutions to which they provide food distribution. But the pandemic wasn’t going to keep them from living up to their mission of being passionate about serving their communities, and so they set out to distribute food to their communities and employees in the Puget Sound Region.

Harbor Wholesale Foods (Harbor) is a fourth-generation, family-owned and operated business distributing products to local Northwest customers since 1923. Harbor currently services more than 3,000 locations throughout Washington and Oregon, and parts of California, Idaho and Alaska from distribution centers in Lacey and Roseburg, Oregon.

On October 12, 2019, Harbor acquired a portion of Food Services of America (FSA) and created a sister company called Harbor Foodservice, which is responsible for the distribution of food to 1,600 local, regional, and national restaurant locations. You can find Harbor Foodservice delivering to your favorite neighborhood pubs, schools, restaurants, and other institutions.

According to Randy Irvine, president of Harbor Foodservice, their organization saw a drop in business by about 75 percent overnight, specifically due to the shutdown and restrictions placed on restaurants. “There has been total disruption in the supply chain and the actions we took in response to it really reflect our purpose of being passionate about serving our community. We consider our employees, our customers, and our communities as family,” says Irvine.

With the sudden disruption their business faced, they faced a problem with massively excessive inventory—and no place for it to go. They didn’t want it to go to waste, so they sought to find ways in which they could use it to serve their community and hopefully encourage other organizations to follow suit with coming together for a greater impact.

The question became: What do they do with all of this food? Their response was three-fold, initiated under the cause of #HarborCares. Read the Full Story in Thurston Talk Here.