“We’re thinking that we are going to have a lot more people coming to us, especially with the schools being closed, and children at home,” said Darlene Leiding, a food shelf volunteer.
And, she says, the food shelf is ready to handle it, even if twice as many people show up.
“We’re just going to accept whoever walked in the door, and give them food,” Leiding said. “We have enough food; we have enough bags prepacked.”
Some other food shelves are changing their business model, and moving to more of a curbside pickup of groceries, and while the Centennial Food Shelf Board discussed that, they are going to try to keep operations normal.
“We have currently that as long as we have volunteers to staff the two nights that we serve clients that we are going to continue as it is.”
While she is anticipating more use, she is also seeing an increase in community support.
“The people who live in this area really support the food shelf,” said Leiding.
Other food shelves in the area are limiting the amount of people in the waiting room or shopping area, switching to curbside pickup, or filling shopping lists while clients wait outside.
At the same time, the amount food that is being collected from grocery stores is way down due to customers buying in bulk.
