SF Turkey Drive’s Pierre Smit Is On A Mission To Feed The Hungry

Pierre Smit fights the food crisis one holiday-themed food drive at a time.

The executive director for the nonprofit St. Francis Living Room hosts two food drives a year: one before Thanksgiving and one before Christmas. The donation opportunities, called the SF Turkey Drive, first started in 2012 when Smit asked his neighbors for donations to St. Anthony’s. A strong turnout encouraged Smit to keep the momentum going, so the next year he partnered with St. Emydius to host a drop-off in their parking lot.

“As an immigrant, you have to learn the culture,” said 70-year-old Smit, who immigrated from Belgium in 1979. “You have to learn so many different things, and you also learn the language. Some days, there was not much food on the table, and so I learned that there shouldn't be anybody going hungry in San Francisco.”

In addition to the usual collection of preferably frozen turkeys and hams and long-lasting vegetables like potatoes, onions and carrots, all of which are donated to St. Anthony’s and to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, Smit is adding the St. Francis Living Room to the beneficiary list. The drive will collect non-perishable breakfast items like peanut butter, jam or jelly and oatmeal for the St. Francis Living Room

“Right now, people are hurting even more than ever."

Smit said this season’s call to action is “your gift of food can be their lifeline,” which refers to the ongoing food insecurity crisis and those impacted by the withheld SNAP benefits or other food-assistance programs.

“Right now, people are hurting even more than ever,” Smit said. “The situation that's been happening with the money not coming to the people who need it the most is hurting everybody. The need is even bigger this year than ever.”

This season’s drives will be held at St. Emydius on Nov. 22 and Dec. 20 from 9 a.m. to noon.

The Ingleside Light caught up with Smit to learn what goes into hosting a community food drive.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical food drive day look like from set up to take down?

I live in Westwood Park now, so I leave around 8 o'clock. We start putting all the A-frames in different corners, and then we start setting up. We have a tent that we put up. Prepare the counter for the coffee and all that for the breakfast [for the volunteers], but also I work with all the volunteers to make sure they understand how to work with a donor, make sure we are safe in the parking lot, and make sure that we are in teams of two. One person picks the items, the other person just makes sure that everything is registered on the receipt, so we can actually thank the people, but also mostly they can give this to the food bank, and they send a receipt, so everything is perfectly following the regulations.

I'm just a middle person promoting everything. I pay for all the publicity advertising, I do all the work, but all the donations received are going directly to them. Actually, the checks are written to the organization, and the payment by Visa is going directly to the website of the food bank.

At 9 o'clock, the drivers come in and they start pulling in. They pop up their trunks or their siddooroo, and we start unloading the turkeys or the donation, whatever it is, and we put it into the proper case. I have volunteers who have been with me for over 10 years, and they do that every year, and they know exactly how to sort everything, so I don't have to worry about it. In 2015, I met this incredible person who is now my husband. He's always taking care of the receipts to make sure that the receipts are all making sense and match the donation, so he's taking care of the accounting. It's a whole organization. Many people are joining in and really helping you know I'm doing the work, but I can’t do it by myself.

Why is participating in food drives like this one important?

With one turkey, we can feed 50 to 60 people. Last year, we collected enough food to prepare about 60,000 meals. It's amazing, and this is the neighborhood here. The neighborhood that everyone always forgets exists in San Francisco. It’s so important for our neighborhood to show what we can do. This is really the idea. If we were in the Tenderloin or if we were in the Western Addition, it would be a totally different thing, but this is an area that’s forgotten many times by politicians, by the people who are trying to make something happen. We are here, in a kind of a dormant, a little bit of space. It's really important to get this space, this place, to have a voice here.

"I'm offering an opportunity to give. That’s all."

We can say, OK, this is what we do here. We exist. We have many schools around here, and we are actually doing some work for the people who are hungry, and they're all over the city. A few times, people at the beginning of the entrance of my church, St. Emydius, come to me saying, Thank you, Pierre, for doing this, because when I'm hungry, I go to St. Anthony, or when I'm hungry, I go to the food bank. That's something that's in our neighborhood, too. It's everywhere, the whole city. People need services like this.

Do you have a favorite memory so far?

The favorite memory would maybe be the people coming to me, saying thank you. That, to me, is very important because they get the food. I'm just a middle guy. I'm just offering, and that's what I always say to people. I'm offering an opportunity to give. That’s all.

What is one piece of advice you have for those who want to participate in their local food drives?

Talk to your neighbors. Talk to everybody. Come on over. Talk to everybody. Anytime I talk about this to anybody, they say Yeah, we want to come. There are volunteers who volunteer at the St. Francis Living Room, who come over here, too. They volunteer over here because they know that there is something happening here.

Mayor Daniel Lurie will attend the food drive from 9 to 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 22.

Correction: The number of turkeys collected to date has been updated.