BATON ROUGE - The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank is doing something unconventional to make sure they can feed as many people as possible this Thanksgiving — they're swapping turkeys for chicken. 

CEO Mike Manning said it's all about the cost.

He added that the food bank can make better use of chickens that are donated, and it's more appropriate since they are feeding families with an average size of two people.

"We want to make sure that we're maximizing the number of people we can get that protein to, as opposed to giving a smaller number too much," Manning said. "We've been averaging on a monthly basis between 45,000 and 50,000 households that we've been helping."

Holiday donations have already begun and with just two weeks until Thanksgiving, distributors are starting to hand out ingredients to those in need. 

"What we try to do and our focus for Thanksgiving is to get the food out early enough so that they can distribute in advance of thanksgiving and make sure everyone has their food in order to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner," Manning said.

At participating Associated Grocers retail member stores, customers can purchase “Red Bags” full of holiday meal staples from the Food Bank.

Manning added that donations through the end of the year will keep the shelves of their warehouse stocked until Lent.

Click here for more information about the GBR Food Bank.