Pedro Garcia found his calling behind the wheel of a truck.
Back in 2009, he was spending 10 hours a day on the road delivering meals to children across Dallas as a driver with Food for Good. But he quickly realized he wasn’t just dropping off food — he was a lifeline in his community. “You see how grateful the kids are,” Pedro says. “These are children who might go to bed without eating. We’re changing that.”
As one of the first hires at Food for Good, the PepsiCo Foundation’s platform for making food more accessible, Pedro has been serving meals to underserved families for 15 years. Food for Good began as a grassroots project bridging the summer gap for Dallas-area children who rely on school meal programs for daily nutrition. Today, with help from people like Pedro, it has delivered more than 75 million meals across the United States, reaching over 150,000 children in 2023 alone.
A former school bus driver, Pedro initially thought this would be a seasonal job. He signed on full-time once he recognized how much the work meant to people in the community he’s called home for 40 years. “There is hunger here that you don’t think happens in the United States,” says Pedro, who lives in Dallas with his wife and three sons. “But when you get out and meet your neighbors, you see it. That motivated me to keep doing this.”