SERVPRO to the (Food) Rescue!

7/7/2020 (Permalink)

Best marketing plan is to sincerely care!

Late April, SERVPRO of Black Hawk County filled the need of our local food bank by volunteering to rescue food from 4 grocery stores every Tuesday and Thursday. SERVPRO employees were all considered essential workers during the pandemic. The marketing team shifted to working from home since many in-person meetings and events transitioned into online gatherings. 

SERVPRO corporate provided online webinars for marketing staff. The focus of our marketing plan turned from visiting and educating insurance agents and commercial businesses of our services to giving generously and finding avenues of helping. In one webinar session, Amber, a co-owner of a SERVPRO in Idaho spoke about ways that she was helping her community. Amber connected people to resources they were looking for through a Facebook group she started. This group was all about the community and very little about SERVPRO. Her enthusiasm to coordinate this type of help inspired us at SERVPRO of Black Hawk County. She was making a difference individually but also as an extension of SERVPRO. When the community needed assistance with a task that she knew SERVPRO could accomplish, she did not shy away from proudly recommending her business. After listening to the webinar, we needed to take action and write our own story of care and concern for our community! 

Marketing Manager, Debbie Robeson, contacted the local food bank to see how we could help. We learned that many of their regularly scheduled volunteers were unable to put their time in due to pandemic restrictions. Governor Reynolds of Iowa mobilized the US National Guard & Americorps to help repackage food at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. One department that wasn’t staffed was the Food Rescue mission. Food Rescue consisted of stopping at several local retail outlets or grocery stores, to pick up food donated by them to the community through the food bank system. 

We are grateful to our boss, Scott Demuth, who didn’t hesitate and agreed to donate employee time, our green SERVPRO vehicles, and cover the cost of mileage each day of rescuing food for this mission.  

We, Debbie and Dani, and occasionally with our warehouse manager Chuck and project manager Sam, picked up food until June 18th, collecting over 16,000 pounds of food! We also donated $350 which provided about 1,400 meals to insecure individuals. If you would like to see more fun pictures of our community involvement, check out our community events photos page on our website.  

The best marketing is to put action with sincere care. Our friends at Northeast Iowa Food Bank shared some kind words about our involvement in their latest newsletter.  We are thankful for the opportunity to help in a different setting from our cleanup and restoration efforts and provide the resources needed. 

Here to Help.