Carol Herzog

In the summer of 1995, Carol Herzog was a recent divorcee trying to establish a new life. Then she found the love of her life: Potluck Inc.

“It’s really one of those things: Potluck and I met each other, and I was the right girl for Potluck and this was really the right organization for me,” she said.

Like Herzog, Potluck had also come to a crossroads. “We were really able to help each other,” she said.

Herzog, a St. Louis native, had been involved with nonprofits in Fayetteville for about 10 years when the board of directors of Potluck took a chance by hiring her to operate the food rescue program that had been established six years earlier.

Ten years ago, Potluck was recovering a few thousand pounds of food a month and distributing it to a handful of agencies. It had very little operating cash and was having to dip into a tiny endowment just to stay afloat.

“Potluck languished under the label of ‘little’ for so long — a ‘little food rescue organization’ — that many people came to believe that ‘little’ was all it could ever be,” Herzog said. “I just didn’t see it that way and have spent the last 10 years putting my heart, soul and passion into turning things around.”

In 2004, there was nothing little about the 2.5 million pounds of food that Potluck received from donors and distributed to hungry Arkansans. And there is nothing little about Herzog’s dreams for the future.

In addition to Kid’s Pantry, which brings nutritious meals to impoverished children during the critical summer months, she is trying to find funding to expand a program she has experimented with called Nutrition Education Workshops. This program would use hands-on workshops to teach low-income families how to buy and prepare nutritious meals on a budget.

“At 5 o’clock, the day doesn’t just end. It’s not that kind of a job, at least not for me,” Herzog said. “Our lives, thankfully, are filled with abundance. So many other lives are not.”

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