Cafe Yumm donates nearly 100K pounds of beans to Food for Lane County

EUGENE, Ore. -- Food for Lane County is getting a special donation -- black beans.

"It's a healthy protein source which is really always in high demand, and it's a product that people are familiar with," says Food for Lane County's Brad Bassi.

What's special about this donation is it's nearly 100,000 pounds of beans -- enough to fill two semi-trucks.

"There's actually such a large donation that we're able to share it with Oregon Food Bank, and these beans will actually be distributed throughout the entire state."

Where did all these beans come from? A local restaurant who cooks a lot of the legumes -- Café Yumm.

"Farmers are so reliant on nature so they give us projections of their yields and if those don't work out we either get too few beans or we get too many beans if they have a bumper crop," explains Cafe Yumm co-founder Mark Beauchamp. "We had a yield that was greater than expected."

Beauchamp says this is by far the largest donation they've made to Food for Lane County.

"We want to nourish people and some people can't go to restaurants -- they don't have sufficient income, they don't have resources, they're not in the right place in life, whatever. We need to nourish them as well."

Of the more than eight-million pounds of food distributed by Food for Lane County, half of it comes from their home county.

"We rely a lot on local donors."

Some of the 20-pound bags will be given to meal kitchens. Others will be packed in smaller amounts for people to take home.