Phase 3 Marketing and Communications’ Post

Transcript

Welcome back to Good Day. Atlanta, GA may be best known for its Peaches, but we got some pretty great onions too. And right now, Vidalia onions are taking center stage in a unique partnership between a family owned farm and some local restaurants. Good Day Atlanta's Paul Miltonia Highland, where something sweet is happening this summer. Hey, good morning everybody. So again, we are celebrating a true treasure of Georgia, the Vidalia onion, and learning so many interesting facts about them too. For example, these onions here can only be grown in a 20 county production area here in Georgia. If you get a Vidalia onion, that's where it's coming from and chances are it's coming from Schuman Farms. And this is John Shuman, who is the President and CEO and the second generation of onion farmer in your family. Are you impressed that I took? Big. I took two bites of that onion. I am impressed with that. Yeah. Thank you. I gotta tell you, they're so good. But you know that already. That's why people love Vidalia onions. Quickly tell me about Shuman Farms again. You've been doing this since the 70s, eighties, right? Yeah. My dad started human forms back in the 70s. We grew our first crop of out of the unions in the early to mid 80s. Yeah. We've been at it ever since. Ever since, Yeah. And now they are famous around the world. And so something you're doing now to spotlight just how good they are and versatile they are is something called the sweetest ingredient. Tell me about. This campaign, Shuman Farms wanting to kick off the Vada Union season this year, partnering with chefs and restaurants around the great state of Georgia to feature Shuman Farms, Vidalia onions and creative menu dishes. Yeah. And so they're doing it here at Murphy's. And we tried a few in the 9:00 hour. But there's another component to this, and that's the charitable component. Tell me what that is and why that's something you wanted to do. There was near and dear to our heart. It's one of our foundational pillars at Shuman Farms, we feel is food producers and growers and farmers. It's an opportunity for us. And it's a responsibility for us to give back into the communities that support our products. And the Atlanta Community Food Bank is serving a critical need in food insecurity in this community. And we feel like as food producers, it's our responsibility to help meet that need. Yeah. And so during this campaign, you are donating meals to the Atlanta Community Food Bank. That's where Ben comes in. Great to see you. To see you, too. By the way, were you impressed with that bite of an onion? I am impressed with us also. Delicious onion, too. They really are. They're so good. So let's let's talk about the importance of things like this. When you partner up in an agency or an organization says, hey, we want to come in and donate meals, what does that mean to you? It means everything, you know, here in Atlanta and actually here in Georgia, yeah, probably roughly one in 10 people are food insecure in our state, including one in eight kids. And currently right now, in the last 18 months, we've seen probably a 40% increase in people seeking our services through our food bank network and our partner agencies. And so we are seeing essentially pandemic level of need going on right now. And so this is amazing. We were so grateful for Shuman Farms. Yeah. And for their donation. It's going to mean thousands of meals for this community. That's amazing. And, and what does it mean to be going into the summer time too? Because in the summertime, kids are not at school. And we know a lot of kids get their meals at school. So we're serving roughly 600,000 people throughout the metro area, Atlanta area and 29 counties. A lot of those are kids. And so right now as we in school, a lot of the families we served our kids are on the free reduced lunch program. And so when summer hits, those meals aren't there. And so this is a a high part of the season. Part of need during the year. So yeah. And something we don't always think about. We think about it during the holidays. That's correct. That's correct. And so, yeah, when those meals aren't there, these kids have to find a way to get some food. So we're going to be there for them through our network of partners. Yeah. So by supporting Schuman Farms, we are sort of helping them give to you, which is great. And of course, right now you can come to a whole host of restaurants who are cooking with these wonderful Vidalia onions. There's a full list online. What do you should we end this segment? All three of us eating one full onion. OK, I'm seeing a no on that, so we'll just wrap it up. And maybe we'll do it off camera. Back to you. Alright, well, for a full list of restaurants participating in the Sweetest Ingredient campaign while the links on Fox 5 atlanta.com, just look for the story under the Good Day section. We're going to take a live look now over the.