Operation Food Search (OFS) is celebrating its 35th year of helping eliminate hunger in the St. Louis area. To commemorate this auspicious occasion, the organization has partnered with Pinnacle Imports for a unique ongoing wine campaign that kicked off on Tuesday, September 1, and will run through January 31, 2016. A group of select wines will be available on wine lists at bars and restaurants across town as well as at participating wine shops and grocery stores, and a portion of sales will benefit OFS.
This is not your run-of-the-mill vino event.
The program began as a result of some brainstorming sessions between OFS executive director Sunny Schaefer, restaurateur Zoe Robinson, and Jennifer Johnson from Chaumette Vineyards & Winery. Originally the idea was to do a smaller fundraising effort, to maybe include just a handful of places, but they quickly realized there was a potential to do something on a much grander scale. Schaefer then brought the idea to Liz Engelsmann, chief operating officer of Pinnacle Imports, who was keen to participate.
“My brother (Bill Kniep, president of Pinnacle) and I were both born and raised in St. Louis, and feel very strongly that we’ve had an opportunity to take a small business and turn it into something that’s become a pretty powerful force in the industry,” Engelsmann says. “We’ve had 16 years of support from this industry and the broader public so we just felt it was time to put something back into the community. It made perfect sense to pair up with an organization that focuses on food and hunger and nourishment.”
Engelsmann and Schaefer then further refined the idea, and thought to feature an extensive list of wines rather than just a few. They were inspired by OFS’s annual Tomato Explosion program (where a large number of area restaurants offered special tomato-based dishes over the course of a month) and decided to include retailers as well as bars and restaurants to further widen the number of participants.
“We wanted to take it beyond just a select few restaurants,” says Engelsmann. “Our idea was to come up with a sustainable program that, if it doesn’t end up running for a year or many years, we could at least reintroduce it every holiday season or periodically.”
For each case of wine sold, Pinnacle and the winery will each donate $4 to OFS. Customers also have the option of donating an additional amount to the cause. Wines include one or two examples of each important grape varietal as well as wines from each major wine producing country. Kniep reached out to suppliers and secured match contributions and helped develop the initial wine list, which ended up including 24 wines from wineries and importers around the world.
Engelsmann noted that "I think Operation Food Search saw the enthusiasm and recognized that we had taken what could have been a small fundraising opportunity and blew it up into something that could be both successful and sustainable.”
The initiative is off to a good start. According to Engelsmann, 129 cases of wine were sold in the first week, with the Pinnacle and winery contributions amounting to $1032, and this doesn’t even include those accounts who had committed to the program but hadn’t placed orders yet. More than 70 companies (not including multiple locations) have signed on so far and the list continues to grow. The complete list of participants is available here.
The majority of the funds raised will go to help fund OFS’s Operation Backpack program, which provides nutritious food to kids in need on a weekly basis.
“It costs about $3.50 per child per week, and we have 3,000 kids we’ll be serving this school year, so the money we raise during this campaign will really be key to keeping that program vital,” says Schaefer.
After January 31, Engelsmann hopes to be able to bring sales numbers to other suppliers to show them how participating in the program can help their brands and potentially launch round two in the spring.
