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Robert St. John's Extra Table feeds the hungry in Mississippi: 'Such a huge blessing'
Hattiesburg restaurateur Robert St. John's charity Extra Table feeds the hungry in 26 Mississippi counties.
Robert St. John's Extra Table feeds the hungry in Mississippi: 'Such a huge blessing' Hattiesburg restaurateur Robert St. John's charity Extra Table feeds the hungry in 26 Mississippi counties. Check out this story on hattiesburgamerican.com: https://hatne.ws/2M4miOa
Ellen Ciurczak, American Staff Writer Published 2:40 p.m. CT June 5, 2018
Edwards Street Fellowship program director Jordan Stephens, right, and intern Alex Rhoden, left, sort through boxes of food on Monday, June 4, 2018. Extra Table provides 3,000 pounds of healthy food a month to Edwards Street Fellowship Center.(Photo: Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American)Buy Photo
It was 2009 and Edwards Street Fellowship Center in Hattiesburg was in dire straits. There were needy people who were hungry, and the food pantry had no food. Officials there didn't know what to do, so they reached out to local restaurateur Robert St. John, owner of such establishments as The Purple Parrot and Crescent City Grill. Surely, he could help.
"They were feeding about 800 people a month and they had no food on their shelves," St. John remembered. "They called me in a panic.
"The quickest and easiest way (for me to get the food they needed) was for me to call my Sysco rep. That got me thinking — there was probably a way to supply these people if we applied business principals to nonprofits."
Getting Sysco to drop ship an order wasn't as easy as St. John thought it would be. Most of the items at the world's largest food service distributor were large and institutional-sized. After a few days combing through the 15,000 items in the Sysco catalog, St. John finally put together an order and had it shipped to the pantry, just in time to make sure its clients got fed.
It was on that day that St. John's charity Extra Table was born — in concept, if not in name.
Story continues after photo gallery.
Where Extra Table's food goes
Edwards Street Fellowship program director Jordan Stephens, right, and intern Alex Rhoden, left, sort through boxes of food on Monday, June 4, 2018. Extra Table provides 3,000 pounds of healthy food a month to Edwards Street Fellowship Center. Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American
Edwards Street Fellowship program director Jordan Stephens, left, and intern Alex Rhoden, right, sort through boxes of food on Monday, June 4, 2018. Extra Table provides 3,000 pounds of healthy food a month to Edwards Street Fellowship Center. Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American
Extra Table provides 3,000 pounds of healthy food a month to Edwards Street Fellowship Center. Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American
Ryan Mannix delivers donated food at Edwards Street Fellowship Center in Hattiesburg. Elijah Baylis/The Clarion-Ledger
Ann McCullen, executive director at Edwards Street Fellowship Center. File photo/Hattiesburg American
Later, St. John approached Sysco about working with him to supply food pantries and soup kitchens with food monthly. What if every business and home had an extra table where they could feed people in need, he wondered. What would that look like? He was committed to finding out.
Extra Table is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending hunger by providing food panties and soup kitchens with new, healthy food for the hungry in their communities. It serves 32 agencies in 26 counties in Mississippi, including Forrest and Lamar.
Extra Table has attracted the attention of some of Mississippi's elite. Sen. Thad Cochran's retirement dinner in Jackson on Thursday and a Mac McAnally concert at FestivalSouth in Hattiesburg Saturday are just two of the high-profile events to raise money for Extra Table.
When Extra Table raises money to buy food, all of the donations go to food purchases. And Extra Table procures only certain kinds of food with its contributions.
"I started Extra Table with two basic principals," St. John said. "One hundred percent of the money we raise for food will always go to food, and the food has always got to be healthy."
More: Extra Table names new executive director
Martha Allen, Extra Table's executive director, said the food the organization provides are supplies on which agencies can rely.
"We provide healthy, shelf-stable food to pantries and food kitchens," Allen said. "They eagerly await the deliveries because they are so large, and it's food they can count on — proteins, rice, beans, powdered milk. It comes every month."
Ann McCullen, executive director of Edwards Street Fellowship Pantry, said the type of food Extra Table gives is exactly what her clients need.
"It's such a huge blessing," she said. "The vegetables, the soups are sodium-free or low-sodium. If it's fruit, it's going to be packed in juice or water.
"The kind of people who come to the food pantry have diabetes or high blood pressure or both, so it's really important the food they receive is healthy."
Extra Table delivers 3,000 pounds of food a month to Edwards Street. Last year, because of the tornado, it increased its donations, dropping off a total of 42,000 pounds of goods.
More: Jeff Lacher: 'I believe in helping people'
McCullen said the food feeds a wide range of people.
"We have families, we have senior citizens who live alone," she said. "We have older adults who are suddenly raising grandchildren. We have young families. We have college students.
"Need knows no boundaries. Some people are with us for a season. Some are with us for a long time."
Extra Table's services are badly needed at Edwards Street and in Mississippi. The state has the nation's largest number of documented food insecure individuals.
"We have 670,000 Mississippians who suffer from food insecurity," St. John said. "(Of those,) 250,000 are school kids who get a school breakfast and a school lunch, but then don't eat again until the next day.
"We have seniors who don't know whether to pay the light bill or buy food."
More: Southern Miss increases outreach as study finds half of college students at risk of hunger
According to the Mississippi Health and Hunger Atlas from the University of Mississippi, food insecurity is high in Forrest County, lower in Lamar. Extra Table says there are more hungry individuals in Hinds County — 57,000 — than the entire population of North Dakota.
Much needs to be done. The additional monies required to meet food needs in Mississippi is more than $282.8 million.
Extra Table is a two-person operation running on a shoestring budget. Administrative costs are not taken out of donations received for food. The services provided are critically important to eliminating hunger in Mississippi and beyond, as St. John considers expanding Extra Table's reach to the entire South and the country.
Allen said Extra Table is about more than feeding hungry people. By giving them healthy, low-sodium, low-sugar food, the nonprofit is providing efficient fuel to power brains and souls.
"When you give someone food, you give them hope and belief to go on and survive another day," she said.
For St. John, Extra Table has become a mission. He enjoys running restaurants, he said, but Extra Table feeds his heart.
"I'm a guy who sells filet mignon for a living," he said. "But I also get canned tuna to places that need it.
"At the end of the day, I'd like to be known as the guy who gets food to people who don't have food."
To donate to Extra Table
Go to:www.extratable.org/donate
Attend: Mac McAnally with the Festival Orchestra, 7:30 p.m., Saturday
Tickets: www.FESTIVALSOUTH.org
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