Several times a week, the shelves of the Gunnison Country Food Pantry fill with customers: A mother and her young son rummage through a basket of Roma tomatoes, an elderly woman pulls 2 gallons of milk from the refrigerator. Around them, volunteers restock the shelves with green peppers, cereal and bread.
This bustling scene is now a regular occurrence each week, as both overall attendance and frequency of visits have increased dramatically since the nonprofit reopened in a new, larger location. The pantry moved to 114 S. 14th St. in October 2023, in part as a result of COVID-exacerbated food insecurity in the Gunnison Valley. The new space is over four times larger, allowing staff to display and serve more food, offer a fresh water station, and serve the largest number of volunteers in its history.
Through the Care and Share Food Bank of Southern Colorado and Feeding America – a national nonprofit network of food banks – the pantry receives tens of thousands of pounds of food each year. City Market, Starbucks, Walmart, Safeway, Natural Grocers and Clark’s all help feed locals.
“There’s a lot more variety, and sometimes it depends on the time of year and growing seasons, but we just have the capacity to offer better options that maintain quality longer,” said general manager Jodi Payne. “Our guests may not have the same shopping experience every day over the course of a month, but every day they come to shop, they get something different.”
The pantry tightened its housekeeping guidelines this summer after staff noticed customers were asking for more food, said manager Angie Krueger, who has been on the team for eight years. Those guidelines dictate how many pounds or how many items — fresh vegetables, dairy, frozen meat, for example — each household can receive.
When the pantry moved to its new space, these guidelines were created to achieve more equitable distribution, following the model of another pantry, Crossfire Ministries in Colorado Springs. Now one to two people can receive 10 different items, three to four people can receive 14 items, five to six people can receive 18 items, and seven or more people can receive 20 items. That’s about four to five more items than last year.
The pantry’s board purchased the new building in early 2022. The old, 900-square-foot building on the southwest corner of Ohio and Main streets could no longer meet the community’s needs, which had doubled after COVID, Krueger said. The pantry can now store food, several walk-in freezers and offices under one roof. An electronic check-in system allows staff to serve clients more quickly.
“I think the community has really embraced what we’re doing,” Krueger said. “And everyone loves the fact that it’s like a grocery store and people can come in and buy select items that fit their household.”
More space makes it easier to restock food, keep shelves stocked and coordinate work with volunteers. At the old location, the few volunteers who could fit into the 900 square feet were constantly running over and bumping into each other, she said. Each month, 130 to 150 volunteers stock the pantry, compared to the roughly 100 served at the old location.
Sam Shelafo, data and systems coordinator, tracks visits to the pantry to determine who is visiting the pantry, how often, and why. Not only are more people visiting the pantry, but she has seen a 30% increase in visit frequency from January to May compared to the same period last year. The pantry now averages 940 visits per month, compared to 600-700 during the same period last year.
“I’m surprised every month by the number of people we serve,” Shelafo said. “Often someone will say, ‘Hey, we reached a record number of families this Wednesday.’ At some point we’ll say, ‘We did that two weeks ago, we did that a month ago.'”
Most of the residents the pantry serves are between the ages of 18 and 69, and the proportion of children is increasing, she said. Currently, shoppers under 18 make up about a quarter of all pantry users.
Over the years, the pantry has served a growing number of the valley’s Hispanic and Cora communities, Krueger said, thanks in no small part to Spanish and Cora translators and a number of Spanish-speaking volunteers. Twice a year, the pantry sees a surge in demand during Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s peak season, when the resort attracts hundreds of workers on J-1 visas.
Demand for the pantry’s fresh water station and refillable plastic bottles, a new amenity, has increased and remains high, Krueger said. She estimates that pantry shoppers use about 50 gallons of water per week.
“Not many people know that there is an entire community here that doesn’t have access to fresh water,” she said. “It’s such an important part of life and we take it for granted.”
The pantry’s services extend well beyond its physical location on 14th Street. It also operates a mobile food distribution, distributes emergency kits (non-perishable food items placed in strategic locations such as police stations, libraries and churches), hosts “pop-up” and “mini” pantries throughout the Valley, and offers Gunni Packs (pre-packaged meal kits) to eligible families year-round.
The pop-up pantries have brought food distribution to new locations in the valley. Working with Oh Be Joyful Church, staff have so far set up one in Crested Butte and one in Mt. Crested Butte, and plan to open nine more by early 2025. So far, staff have learned that many who work in Crested Butte but live in Gunnison have difficulty keeping to the pantry’s hours. They also met many North Valley workers who were surprised to find they fell under the pantry’s income restrictions, Payne said.
Despite the growth of the pantry’s services, Krueger knows there are many valley residents the pantry doesn’t serve. These could include seniors, students, seasonal workers and middle-income people who don’t qualify for SNAP or Medicaid but still struggle with weekly grocery bills.
“The most surprising thing to me is that we’re still not reaching (certain) populations in our community,” she said. “We’re all struggling right now to live where we live. Things are so expensive… I just want people to understand and know that we’re a resource for them.”
(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or [email protected].)
