AUBURN – The Good Shepherd Food-Bank honored its biggest benefactor, Hannaford groceries, with a new award and a 450-person gala that filled its massive Auburn warehouse.

Hannaford CEO Ron Hodge received the JoAnn Pike Humanitarian Award, named after the food bank’s late founder.

“I was deeply honored and humbled,” Hodge said Monday. “JoAnn was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known. It was her drive and willpower and love and caring that created the food bank.”

Pike, who died in March 2004, often credited Hannaford with keeping the food bank afloat.

In the mid-1980s, the grocery store chain began sending food unfit for sale – broken boxes and out-of-date containers – to the food bank.

“Hannaford Bros. made us,” Pike told the Sun Journal in 2000.

Other companies have made significant gifts to the charity, but none has rivaled the near-daily stream of tractor-trailers that have brought donations from Hannaford to the food bank, spokeswoman JoAn Chartier said.

About 8 million pounds of food, accounting for 60 percent of the food distributed by the charity, still comes from the grocer.

“I always thought it was a perfect fit,” said Hodge, who is part of a growing group of Hannaford executives who have helped the food bank. Several serve on the charity’s board of directors.

Friday’s awards gala was the first of its kind for the food bank. Towers of food were pushed aside to make room for dozens of 10-person tables. The warehouse was transformed into a dining area, Chartier said.

A stage was erected on the warehouse floor and bulk food containers, such as mayonnaise jars and juice cans, were used to hold flowers for each centerpiece.

About 85 percent of the people who attended had never been inside the facility, Chartier said.

That might become the biggest prize of the night, Hodge said.

“A lot of the people who attended, many with the means to help, didn’t know as much as they should about the food bank,” he said.

The Good Shepherd Food-Bank supplies about 1.5 million meals each month across Maine. The enormity of the charity’s work cannot be appreciated until someone walks inside, Hodge said.