Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Volunteers at Storehouse Food Pantry were taken by surprise when they were informed that Lincoln County-based farm Hill Top Angus wanted to donate over 4,000 pounds of beef for the nonprofit to hand out to their clients on Dec. 18.

Chris Thomas, the owner of Hill Top Angus, says his charitable efforts are inspired by his late father-in-law Ricky Irwin.

“He was a Baptist preacher, and we try to give back whenever we can,” he said. “Manchester has been really good to us.”

Hill Top has regular flash sales in Manchester where customers can get $150 worth of beef for $100. The angus farm also supplies beef to local institution Jiffy Burger, as well as 122 West in Tullahoma and all Los Trojas in the Middle Tennessee area.

“It’s what we live for,” said Thomas. “We’re not doing this to get rich. We’re doing this to make sure that we supply local beef at a reasonable price. We supply the restaurants, and if we have extra cuts that we don’t supply them, instead of us selling them at a top profit, we try to sell them at a market price.”

Thomas says that the farm donates usually around 4-6,000 pounds of beef a year. In addition to that, they also do a food drive every three months where at their flash sales instead of charging $100 they’ll charge $100 plus two food items. They then donate those items locally.

Hill Top started with a replacement heifer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thomas works full-time at Great Lakes Cheese and does Hill top on the side. He noted that his philanthropic efforts were also inspired by Great Lakes Founder Hans Epprecht.

“I’ve been out there for 13 years now and every year they wanted to make sure our freezer or refrigerator was full of product that we could consume at Christmas, so ever since then we’ve tried to produce something similar to that,” he explained. “When we started doing that, I told my wife Rachel that once we seed this, I want my business to be exactly what Great Lakes Cheese is doing because it works.”

Thomas’s son Dustin runs the meat business and does all of the deliveries. He explained that he enjoys being generous.

“Right now, especially, I just like giving more than receiving,” he said. “We always like doing this kind of thing.”

Storehouse Volunteer Coordinator Laurie Campbell says that the pantry volunteers aim to work for God.

“We try our best to seek God at this food pantry in everything that we do,” she said. “The decisions we make, the people we talk to, the contacts that we have, if we go to God first, he’s going to work it out. This is like an extra bonus. We didn’t even know about it, and then we got contacted.”

“To be able to get all of this beef to hand out is going to be a wonderful blessing to our clients,” she added.

Campbell noted that she wants the community to know what others in the community are doing for those in need.

“It’s not just about us, it is the community coming together to be able to feed people in our community,” she explained. “It’s all working together. We’re not here to get our name up in lights or anything like that. We’re here to do God’s purpose, and I believe with all my heart if we seek him first in everything that we do, everything else will work out. It always does.”