SELBYVILLE, De-
A mountain of boxes and more chickens than you can count! Today Mountaire boxed over 2-thousand Christmas dinners for people in need.
It took over 100 volunteers and a full assembly line to get the dinners ready. People from churches, food pantries, and other community organizations filled their cars with up to 200 dinners and distributed them where they saw fit.
Packing a car
"We want to show the love to our community. They do so much for us, so we are just giving back to our community, giving back to the people at our school, and just helping out so they can have a nice Christmas," said volunteer Kaylee Hall.
Each box includes a chicken, box of brownie mix, green beans, gravy, corn, and other sides. But this isn't the only time of year Mountaire gives free holiday meals.
"This is part of our Thanksgiving for Thousands program that starts, obviously at Thanksgiving, but we also do it at Christmas and Easter," said Director of Communications and Public Relations, Cathy Bassett.
Thanksgiving for Thousands
Since these dinner are for people around the area, Mountaire has people of the community decide where they go.
"Groups are literally coming and picking them up as soon as they're packed. We load them right into their vehicles and then they're going and they're distributing them into the community. They know where the greatest need is," said Bassett.
While the event helps thousands of families, the volunteers benefit too.
"Everybody has a hard time and Christmas is a really hard time for some people. And if it's a chicken dinner and some corn and string beans that can help them have a merry Christmas, than that's what we're here for," said Hall.
Mountaire provides all the food for the Easter and Thanksgiving event. The company hosts a food drive in November so people can donate food for the Christmas dinners.
