Every year thousands of community volunteers don latex gloves and hair nets at Northwest Harvest’s Kent Distribution Center.

Volunteer Coordinator, Elle Hunter, walks them through the steps to either sort gigantic bins of fresh produce or bag up family size portions of dried beans or rice. 

Each of these jobs start at the stainless steel sorting tables that are the work horses for over 15,000 volunteer hours annually.  Not surprisingly, the tables occasionally need repairs, but are too large to truck to a fabrication shop to be fixed. 

Hermanson Company has had a long-standing relationship with Northwest Harvest as both a fiscal sponsor and providing teams of sorting volunteers.  When the needed repairs came to light, plans were made to send welder, Bob Benes, to the warehouse to make repairs to three tables. 

“I so appreciate the time that Hermanson donated to fixing the tables,” says Hunter, “It was really beyond our capacity to make the repairs.  Being able to bring two of the tables back into production will be great.” 

Northwest Harvest distributes approximately two million meals per month through its statewide network of 375 food banks, meal programs, and high-need schools. To learn more, visit northwestharvest.org.