Lehigh Valley food pantries struggle amid a surge: 'It's kind of the perfect storm'

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - More than once, Allison Czapp has sifted through the numbers and asked the same thing: “Could this be right?”

Czapp is associate executive director for Second Harvest Food Bank of the Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania. She and others who work to supply food in the region say the past nine months have been a full sprint.

“I’m thankful that we’re able to accommodate the increased demand as best we can,” Czapp said. “But something has got to change, because this is not sustainable.”

• Food banks and food pantries are seeing record levels of distribution
• Inflation is one of the main factors creating need
• Officials say monetary donations are just as helpful as food

Need continues to grow for emergency food services in the Lehigh Valley. And demand is higher than ever, according to food pantry managers.

The Lehigh Valley has risen to the challenge this holiday season with an enormous supply of donated supplies, fundraisers and food drives. Those who work in emergency food services, however, worry that 2023 will bring more of the same in record numbers of food distributions – and folks who rely on them.

Demand spiked around March and hasn’t let up.

“It’s kind of the perfect storm,” said Czapp, alluding to wild inflation, the end of pandemic-era benefits like the beefed-up child tax credits, and rising food costs.

Numbers on the rise

Second Harvest covers a six-county area that includes the Lehigh Valley. Czapp said the number of people served through Second Harvest was up 75% per month in 2022. It served an average of nearly 72,000 people per month last year and nearly 84,000 in November alone.

More than 18,000 new households entered the Second Harvest system for the first time last year, Czapp said. By far the largest food bank in the Lehigh Valley, it distributes food to individuals and several smaller food pantries across the region.

“The silver lining I guess if you could call it that is our capacity has increased during this entire year,” Czapp said. “We’re distributing much more food now than in the previous year. We’re getting much more food out and looking at exploring new relationships with other food donors in the Lehigh Valley. We’re just trying to get as much food out and as much food in to meet this new demand.”

In Bethlehem, New Bethany Ministries operates an emergency food pantry that’s open from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. weekdays. The story is the same.

“Oh my gosh, yes, so many new faces,” said Brandy Garofalo, who runs the food pantry and hospitality center in South Bethlehem. “We’re seeing people who we haven’t seen before, as well as the familiar faces who are more regular than they were before. A lot of our guests come once a month like clockwork.”

Czapp says the forces that affect emergency food services aren’t altogether different than those that affect most homes.

“Looking at the numbers for the consumer price index, food has outpaced every category as far as inflation goes,” she said. “And it’s still rising – the cost of food and especially the cost of food at home. And it’s critical items, too – staples like bread, cereal, eggs.”

'People are just scared'

A review of New Bethany’s numbers shows demand hasn’t necessarily grown dramatically in the last year, according to Garofalo. But the tenor of this crisis is different, she says.

“I’ve had this job for 22 years. It’s definitely craziness,” she said. “But you know what it is now? It’s the urgency. And people are just scared.”

Garofalo cited other factors, too, like the closing of the neighborhood Ahart’s Market last year and a lack of affordable housing.

“All of these things together, plus the price of gas, people are trying to use food pantries to free up money for other things like paying the bills,” she said.

At the Easton Area Neighborhood Center, the food pantry is open six different times a month with people limited to one visit per month. The center, which is on the city’s South Side, has distributed food to 828 households since July 1, said interim Executive Director S. Jake Williams.

“Demand has almost doubled,” he said. “We’ll have patrons come an hour to an hour-and-a-half before we open. We’ve gotten to the point where every week we were saying to ourselves informally, ‘That’s a new record.’”

Looking forward

Food pantry managers say they’re still looking for a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Whether these trends start reversing or at least stop increasing depends on some of the efforts of our federal government,” Czapp said. “I think that there’s hope on the horizon, but at Second Harvest we’re definitely moving forward anticipating that we’ll see these numbers continuing to rise.”

Besides volunteers and donors, she credited her staff and warehouse crew for their response to the demand.

“They understand the role they’re playing in the community and they buckled down and got through it,” Czapp said. “Like everything, the increases were so rapid and large, we couldn’t fully anticipate this in our budget. Having people who really understand what we’re doing is the main driver of being able to get more food out.”

While food donations and drives are key to filling needs, workers in emergency food services say cash is just as important. Most of the food pantries and nonprofit organizations have information on their websites for monetary donations.

“About half of our inventory is donated, but things like fresh fruits and vegetables, and perishable proteins, we’re purchasing those outright,” Czapp said. “A lot of the funds go toward fresh food purchases. We also have a lot of transportation costs delivering to a six-county area.

“One thing we’re really leveraging right now are the supermarket round-up dollars,” she said. That’s a program where supermarket shoppers in the checkout line can round up their purchase price to benefit Second Harvest or others.

“We can purchase food right there,” Czapp said. ”It can be quite an impactful amount of money and allow us to get some extra food. All of those round-up dollars go directly to the purchase of food. There’s no overhead.”

Marc Rittle, executive director of New Bethany Ministries, said he’s expecting a long haul.

“We did receive a lot of donations in the holiday season, but usually that drops off as early as January,” he said. “In any year we anticipate that drop-off. But we do not anticipate demand or need to drop off.”