Foster Farms is donating 400,000 servings of poultry to community hunger relief organizations throughout California to help families impacted economically by COVID-19. Recently, the family-owned company announced a donation of two million servings of protein to food banks and community organizations on the West Coast, and in Louisiana and Alabama. 

SeaPak Shrimp & Seafood Co. and Budweiser are delivering multiple truckloads of SeaPak Budweiser Beer Battered Shrimp in Cincinnati, Ohio, to support those in need during the coronavirus outbreak. The donation will provide 100,000 servings of seafood to Freestore Foodbank--the largest emergency food and services provider in the Greater Cincinnati area, which also includes parts of Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana. Ohio’s recent "stay at home" order and other restrictions have made access to food more difficult for many living in Greater Cincinnati.

Brookshire Grocery (BGC) is giving its nearly 14,000 retail employees an additional bonus installment that equals up to a half-week’s pay. This second discretionary bonus complements the first bonus given in March for a total of one-week’s pay, and comes after a temporary pay increase of $1 per hour through May 1, 2020. The company also provided its staff with a supply of face masks to wear while working.  

Butterball donated 500,000 meals to The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina today. The donation will help feed those most impacted by COVID-19 in the communities where Butterball team members live and work.

Smithfield Foods will suspend operations at its Monmouth, Illinois, facility beginning next week and until further notice after a small portion of its 1,700 employees tested positive for COVID-19. The Monmouth plant represents approximately 3% of U.S. fresh pork supplies and also produces bacon. Employees will be paid during the closure.

This week on our From the Cold Corner podcast, we sit down with Tom Swovick, market development manager for proteins at Dematic, to discuss the future of cold storage and logistics through the lens of automation and AGVs, as well as what solutions might be out there to help ease the strain on the cold foods chain from COVID-19 disruptions. Swovick also details Dematic’s virtual tradeshow plans while industry conventions are shut down--a business pivot becoming more common to connect with clients as shelter-in-place continues. 

Farm Rich donated over 1,700 pounds of product--approximately 24,000 mozzarella cheese sticks--to five local food banks and organizations providing food to residents in need. The donations were made to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia (Brunswick, Georgia, located near Farm Rich HQ), Cincinnati Area Senior Services, and The Healing Center (both in Cincinnati, Ohio), and the Mid-South Food Bank (Memphis, Tennessee).

New numbers from NCSolutions for the week ending April 18 support the trend that many cold foods are still selling strong, focusing on frozen food categories in particular. Week-over-week numbers showed a decline in most frozen categories, which NCSolutions attributes to slower Easter weekend shopping when many stores were closed for the holiday.

Tyson Fresh Meats, the beef and pork subsidiary of Tyson Foods, plans to indefinitely suspend operations at its Waterloo, Iowa, pork plant this week. The facility, the company’s largest pork plant, has been running at reduced levels of production due to worker absenteeism, and will stop production mid-week until further notice. The facility’s 2,800 team members will be invited to come to the plant later this week for COVID-19 testing.

Tyson Fresh Meats, the beef and pork subsidiary of Tyson Foods, will resume limited operations at its pork plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa, after being idle for two weeks due to COVID-19 concerns.