Kroger volunteers fight against food insecurity

Volunteers are on a mission to pack one million meals. This is an effort to fight hunger. Yeah, this event is taking place at Gillies. That's just south of downtown Dallas. Paige Ellenberger is live there this morning with the story, good morning. Hey guys, good morning. It is an energetic atmosphere here inside of Gillies, Dallas, that is. I found Tara and Ryan from 99.5 The Wolf. Hey, Ryan is still trying to figure out how to put on this beard, hairnet. Does this look good? How do I look, Paige? You've never looked better. I mean, seriously. We came in here kind of at the last minute. They just started packing things up and they said, y'all need hairnets before you walked inside. So here we are. It's a little halved, but we got it. This is an incredible event. It's Kroger Community Day, giving back to the community. You know, this is the most food insecure state in the whole country, which blows my mind. It means our neighbors two doors down are having and facing food insecurity. So we're gonna pack a million meals today. Kroger gives back to the community so much and we love that they let us be a part of it. Ton of our listeners have come out and you can come out. You don't even have to pre-register. You can walk up and register to come out and pack meals. And look at this, this is a team building thing. I do this by myself a lot too. So if you're by yourself and you're like, oh, I can't, you just go down the line, pack a meal and boom, before you know it, people are no longer hungry in Texas, which we love that. Yeah, and there are no strangers inside of this building. It is so easy to find a friend here. When you see our community come together like this, Ryan, I mean, how does it make you feel seeing more than 1,500 volunteers wake up this early to pack a million meals? I'm not surprised, Paige. I mean, this is what Texans do. We help each other. If you just look across this room, I mean, it's all walks of life. It's young and old. Some folks brought their families out here, their kids. This is a really great thing to show your kids. By the way, I'm told that if your kid needs community service hours for their school, you know, for their group, you can get those done here as well. Get them knocked out right before the school year starts. But this is why we do this, right? And thanks to Kroger. Thanks to U.S. Hunger. Thank you guys, Fox 4, for coming out. It's a beautiful day. It's a great day to be a Texan. Yeah, and every single time we talk about how food banks and food pantries are maybe facing some shortages and they need to get different types of food in the door so they can get it out to our neighbors, it's a story we cover so often for you guys seeing the impact that it's gonna make for nine different food banks and charities and pantries across our viewing area. Just knowing that we are a part of this community, it makes you feel so proud. It really, really does. Sometimes people get overwhelmed by it, but it's these small, easy things that you can do. And I mean, think about this. Somebody is watching this that is not gonna have food and they're like, oh my gosh, the food, that's where it comes from. And it just, I think it just makes, I said earlier, this is a great first date idea. I'm just saying, grab that cute girl in the office you've been wanting to ask her out and let's go. By the way, this is a party. Listen to the music in here. And also, Paige, I'm told that the Gillies' Dallas Mechanical Bull is operational over here. So if you ladies wanna give that a whirl, that can be arranged as well. You're first. Yeah, I'm first. And I will surely get on that bull. It's been a while since I've seen Gillies' Dallas' ballroom filled with this many people for one common goal. It is such an incredible event. It's the first time y'all are sponsoring the event because it's the first time Kroger has done this here in Dallas. As far as the future goes, seeing this type of support that has come out, I think there's gonna be plenty more. It's magic, I love it. So look, seriously, if you're watching this right now and you're like, ah, what am I gonna do today? This is what you're gonna do today. Great way to end the summer and go into the school year with your kids. You can bring your kids too. It's just amazing, we love it. They need folks for the later shifts this afternoon. So mealpack.org is the website, mealpack.org. Just come on out here at Gillies. All right, hey, we appreciate it. Always so fun to see you guys. Thanks for taking some time to chat. Hey, they mentioned it. There are still plenty of shifts. All of these volunteers, 1,500 of them, doing three two-hour shifts here. There is still availability later on come this afternoon. So come on out to Gillies in Dallas. It is an incredible event, a million meals. I wanna put an emphasis on that word, a million meals. It's gonna make the difference between somebody waking up hungry and somebody having food in their belly later on today. Guys, back to you. No doubt.