It could best be described as a spartan grocery store

Shelves hold canned goods, packed sugar, cake mixes, bottles of honey, cereals, and cake mixes.

There are several bins of fresh produce with a scale.

There is a large refrigerator section stocked with meat and dairy products.

In addition, there are basic household, baby, and personal hygiene products as well.

Shoppers push carts along to fill the baskets with their needs.

Actually, most of the grocery selections are done by staff filling orders for curbside pickup.

But this is not your typical grocery store.

There is no cash register.

There are no paid employees.

And the driving force isn’t profit, but rather prophets.

In this case it is Joseph Smith, prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The “store” is in a modern-looking box-ish stucco building in an older looking industrial area of Stockton southwest off the Mariposa Avenue and Highway 99 interchange is known as a bishop’s storehouse.

And in any given year, 1,500 families in LDS stakes that serve multiple wards including Manteca, Ripon, and Lathrop as well as the Turlock, Tracy, Modesto, Lodi, Mountain House and Stockton areas.

The impact of a bishop’s storehouse goes way beyond the church.

The Stockton storehouse, as an example, serves significantly more families outside the church that are assisted though organizations such as HOPE Ministries family shelters in Manteca.

HOPE Ministers is the latest in a long list of Northern San Joaquin Valley non-profits assisting the needy to benefit from a grant that allows them year-long access for items from the storehouse.

In addition, bishops in the regional will also refer non-church members for assistance who are struggling to provide for their families with the ability to shop for basics at the facility that is a key part of the LDS welfare system.

“The majority of the food goes to non-members of the church,” noted Dale Frtichen.

Fritchen, along with his wife Jill, have served the last four years of their retirement volunteering as the managers of the bishop’s storehouse in Stockton which is one of 260 nationwide.

The Weston Ranch couple has been active in the community for years. Dale served for eight years on the Manteca Unified School District board plus four years as a Stockton City Council member.

And just like the volunteers that unload semi-trucks, stock the warehouse, fill orders, and do building maintenance, the Fritchens are 100 percent volunteers.

While it can be argued the LDS church elevated its storehouse system to a scientific art, Fritchen points out storehouses are mentioned in the Bible.

The first storehouse, as noted in the Bible, was the one operated by the high priest, prophet, and king Melchizedek.

 The 260 storehouses in the United States today, are technologically different than the first LDS bishop’s storehouse established in 1831. The operating premise, however, is the same.

And that includes the fact 90 percent of all the products that fill the shelves and refrigeration units are church produced. The exceptions are primarily items such as baby diapers, household products, and personal hygiene products.

The raw materials for much of what is produced is provided by various stakes and church operations as well as grown or raised on church farms.

As an example, the largest meat packing plant in the United States is operated by the church in Florida.

Most stakes have their own food producing endeavors such as hydroponics food production in Tracy.

The Manteca stake once had a robust canning operation for fruits and vegetables at the Stockton storehouse until California regulations for canneries surpassed a threshold that was to expensive for the operation to meet.

All items produced are shipped to distribution centers in Salt Lake City. For there, they are trucked to storehouses across the country.

Trucks rarely make the return trip empty.

From Stockton, they take cans produced in Oakdale back to Salt lake City for distribution to canning operations elsewhere.

Fritchen noted the church stress that its members should strive to have a six-month supply of food on hand.

It isn’t a doomsday scenario driving such a goal.

Instead, it is an effort to make sure families can provide for their basic needs in the event there is  a prolonged illness, death, or loss of employment in their household.

And in cases where a church household is not in a position to provide for its needs in time of a crisis, bishops refer them to the storehouses.
It’s not that the six-month family food supply doesn’t come in handy during disasters. It does.

The failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho in 1976 cut off a number of small communities for days and damaged most of the retail stores. In that case, church members whose homes survived the devastation shared their food stores not only with church members that were impacted but others in the community as a whole.

Non-profits, such as HOPE Ministries, are provided a two-sided order list with just under 150 items. They check off what they need.

They have the options of having the order filled for them and be ready to pick up the three days a week the storehouse is open. The can also drop by and fill their own order.

Bishops that refer families will check off the list of items that are needed for that household.

The items are designed to assure that basic nutritional needs are met in addition to basic personal hygiene and such.

The list includes cereals, dairy, breads. eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat, canned meat, canned soup, canned fruits and vegetables, drinks, beans, rice, potatoes, jams and condiments, cooking products, desserts, sugars, flours, pastas, and seasonal items such as candy, whole turkeys, and fixings for traditional Thanksgiving dinners such as canned pumpkin, stuffing mix, black olives, and cranberry sauce.

The strive to be self-sufficient also applies to the storehouse operations.

The Stockton facility has its own back-up generator and water well. A septic system will soon be installed as well.

“It (the storehouse) is not just for our church,” Fritchen said. “It’s also for other people who are in crisis.”

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@manteabulletin.com