The mobile food pantry travels from Coalville to Pinebrook and the Heber Valley with fresh food and packaged goods. The next three events will be held on Wednesdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. or until supplies last.
This week the pantry will be at the Elk Meadows Apartments on Kilby Road. On Wednesday, July 20, the pantry will be set up in Coalville and the following week, on the 27th, the pantry will be in Kamas with those locations to be determined.
After that two more mobile food pantries are planned for Wasatch County – both Thursdays, July 28 and August 18 in Heber City.
Rob Harter, Executive Director of the Christian Center, says getting out into the communities has been a hit.
“The goal with these mobile food pantries is really to bring the food pantry to people - bring it back to their apartment,” Harter said. “We found that people that are working one, two, maybe three jobs, even really difficult for them to find a time to stop by our food pantry, even though we're open Monday through Saturday, it’s just tough for their schedule. So, by bringing food to the apartments, it's so much easier. And so that's been a real hit with that. We've seen, I think it's like a 35% increase in people that have never come physically to our food pantry, either in Heber or in Park City, and now they're coming to our mobile food pantry.”
Harter says they have also linked up with People’s Health Clinic and Mountain Mediation Center during the mobile pantries to provide free health screenings as well as offering free legal advice.
Much of the fresh food provided at the mobile pantries he says comes from Smith’s.
“They give us a grant every year in the form of gift cards that we can turn around and then go shopping at Smith, buy the food,” Harter said. “And so that's what we do. We typically buy the produce fresh, either, usually the day of, sometimes the day before, so we have plenty to have to distribute. We give a lot of food out - it’s fresh, we just purchased it. And again, thanks to Smith for allowing us to get that extra food. And then of course we get a lot of food just from every day picking up at the grocery stores. So, we still have a lot of things that come from all the various grocery stores that we add to it.”
The schedule for the mobile food pantry can be found here.
