According to scripture, Jesus once fed a crowd of 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. Bryan Banta, president of B&B Pools, also is attempting to feed the masses with similarly miraculous multiples.

The effort started as a way to celebrate the Pompano Beach-based pool service company’s 30th anniversary. Banta and his church sought to help meet South Florida’s growing demand for food. The church had found an organization that managed to stretch a dollar enough to fund about 10 meals — exponentially more than one could get at the store.

Seeing how a single dollar could feed so many people excited Banta, a former financial planner.

“To me, it’s kind of a return on investment,” he says. “You can see the output is much greater than what you put into it.”

So Banta embarked on an ambitious goal — to provide 100,000 meals to people in need this year. The project got under way just months before the COVID-19 pandemic would close the economy and send people from all walks of life to the nearest food banks.

“It’s interesting to see and hear the stories about where this food is going,” Banta says. “You think it’s [only] going to poor people. No, it’s really not. It’s going to people that we know.”

This knowledge has taught him a lesson: “You don’t know the people’s situations; you don’t know how they’ve been affected. You don’t know the difficulty they’re facing.”

B&B Pools, a PSN Top 50 Service provider, is engaging its customers in the effort to provide these meals. The company supplies 500 meals for every pool heater, variable-speed pump or salt system it installs. Additionally, every new customer equals 500 meals.

“We tried to be strategic about how we gave — in other words, what triggered a gift,” Banta says. “So we chose the things that we knew people wanted.”

In January, B&B Pools provided more than 9,000 meals. At that rate, the company would meet or even exceed its goal by December.

But there was a hitch: The church’s food partner at the time raised its costs. Rather than the 10 meals, a dollar would only provide about seven. That put Banta’s goal likely out of reach. Fortunately, they found a new partner, On Dry Land Outreach, which provides 20 meals for every dollar donated, effectively doubling B&B Pools’ impact.

Banta also expanded ways to involve his customers. Now, not only big-ticket items spur a donation — the company provides 100 meals for every cartridge filter replacement, too.

B&B Pools closed out September by supplying 32,600 meals, its best month to date, for a total of nearly 119,000 so far this year. Banta amended his goal to 150,000 meals by year’s end. You can follow their progress on Facebook @BBPOOLSINC.