Community Pantry membership grows by 75 percent
The old adage goes,
”
If you build it, they will come.
”
And that has been the case with Community Pantry, the local food
bank that distributes goods to residents throughout San Benito
County.
Community Pantry membership grows by 75 percent
The old adage goes, “If you build it, they will come.” And that has been the case with Community Pantry, the local food bank that distributes goods to residents throughout San Benito County.
Two years ago, the board members and Mary Anne Hughes, the executive director, struggled to find a larger facility closer to town to better serve the needs of clients. They had a warehouse facility, but it was small and could not accommodate distribution of food goods. When it came time to pack up paper bags with food and distribute them, they had to move the operation to Veterans Memorial Park. Rain or shine, volunteers gathered at the picnic benches on the east side of Memorial Drive and handed out bags of food each week.
Since moving into a warehouse on San Felipe Road more than a year ago, the distribution all happens on site. But the Pantry has many new members.
“We thought we would grow by 30 percent,” Hughes said, of the increase expected after the move. “We grew 75 percent. We had a lot of publicity and the public got to recognize us.”
In December 2005, the pantry staff and volunteers helped 730 households. Now they serve nearly 1,400 homes in San Benito county most weeks.
“We’ve been able to get more money – had more donations – but we still can’t keep up,” Hughes said.
Of the more recent members, Hughes said, many of them are people who have never relied on food banks before.
“We have a lot of people who said they lost their jobs and unemployment ran out,” Hughes said.
“We are getting people saying, ‘I never thought I’d be here,'” said Franz Schneider, vice-chair of the Community Pantry board of directors.
They even have one client who used to be a donor.
“For a lot of people who are new, it is a really emotional thing,” Schneider said. “They’ve never relied on charity before.”
The Pantry is a sort of co-op so members do not need to feel as though they are taking a hand out. Members pay up to $40 to join and volunteer up to six hours a week, depending on their household income and size of their family.
“Some are uncomfortable about taking the food and they donate more time than they need to,” Hughes said.
They had one client who got a job with Earthbound Farms and no longer needed their services. The company has a program where employees can apply for the company to donate to a favorite charity. While working in Yuma, Ariz., the man applied in honor of Community Pantry. They just received notice they will be getting $1,000.
The nonprofit staff relies heavily on grants, and Hughes is always on the search for more grants. Though Community Pantry received a community development block grant last year and this year from the city of Hollister council members, the grant was earmarked for rent expenses. At their smaller warehouse on the outskirts of town, the staff paid no rent. Rent on the larger facility is $3,900 a month.
“We asked the city to help with rent and this is how they did it,” said Franz Schneider, vice chair of the Community Pantry board.
The new facility has office space, a lobby area and a warehouse space that is nearly three times the space at the old location. The warehouse space is the crown jewel of the new location.
Warehouse Manager Larry Smith has organized the space into easy to manage categories with baby food and large quantity items on shelves for agencies such as Emmaus House or the San Benito County Homeless Shelter. Community Pantry provides food to 13 agencies in the county.
Bread is kept in large cardboard barrels, while boxes of other foods line pallets around the room. Produce and other perishable foods are kept in a cooler.
Most days there are a handful of volunteers or members packing up food for the paper bags that are handed out each week. For instance, Hughes purchases large quantity bags of some staples, such as pinto beans for a reduced cost from Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. They can purchase the bags for 70 percent of wholesale cost. The beans are then divided into smaller plastic bags for clients.
In terms of food items, the Pantry has been in good shape. Larry Smith, the warehouse manager, has agreements with local stores and restaurants for bread donations as well as Mission Tortilla in Salinas. They also work with the Monterey Food Bank in the winter months for shortages of bread goods. In the summer when Community Pantry has extra produce, they return the favor, Smith said.
“I concentrate on tortillas, beans, rice, bread,” Smith said. “If you get that, you have a meal.”
Hughes stressed that one of the biggest needs right now is monetary donations. The money helps to cover rent, operating costs and the purchase of foods such as pinto beans. Food banks can generally turn each dollar donated into $9 worth of food.
“Food drives are important, but we can make money go farther,” Schneider said.
In addition to paying for electricity, which went up in the larger facility, they also have fuel costs as well as salaries for the four paid employees. Some money is also used for memberships to things such as Ag Against Hunger, a nonprofit that collects excess produce from fields in San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties. Membership just went up to $450 a quarter, but Hughes said it is still a bargain, “considering we got something like $200,000 in produce from them last year.”
Since moving to the new location, with the help of Smith, Hughes has been able to closely monitor the inventory that comes in and out of the warehouse. She has been tracking the cost of bags and meals. For January, the cost came out to $4.24 a bag or .30 a meal.
Community Pantry is located at 1133 San Felipe Dr. in Hollister. For more information on Community Pantry, visit www.communitypantry.com, call 637-0340 or e-mail [email protected].
By the numbers:
106 Volunteers
1,307 Households served
91,758 Meals served
$4.24 Cost per bag
$.30 Cost per meal
$28,136 Total expenses for Community Pantry in January, 2008
