Pierce County food banks facing ‘crisis’ as record numbers seek help and donations dry up

Uwe Cook splurged just before heading to a Tillicum food bank on Thursday. He first stopped at a Safeway.

The 64-year-old retiree displayed his purchases: two club sandwiches, two small containers of prepared salad and a box of cupcakes. All of it was destined for his 5-person household. Total price including tax: $41.25.

Next, Cook entered the Nourish Pierce County mobile food truck. His cost after shopping: $0.

Unlike supermarkets, food banks don’t have delis, butchers and bakeries. The products they do carry depend on donors and what the food banks can buy week to week. Now, Pierce County food banks report, even those staples are in short supply as donations dwindle and customers seek food assistance in record numbers.

“We’re really facing a crisis,” Nourish Pierce County CEO Sue Potter said Thursday outside the truck parked next to Tillicum Baptist Church. It’s one of the organization’s two converted semi moving trucks outfitted with shelves, freezers and coolers with signage in English, Spanish and Cyrillic. Customers take shopping carts up a ramp and then down the length of the truck, grabbing items as they go.

During the COVID pandemic, federal, state and local governments joined forces to provide funds and resources for food banks.

“We had National Guard replace our volunteers, and they were with us for a year,” Potter said.

Now, food banks are increasingly on their own.

“This is different, because no one’s coming to our rescue this time,” she said.

Bare shelves

Cook’s food budget eats up more and more of his fixed income with each passing month, he said.

“A big chunk,” he said while looking at his haul of canned soups, vegetables, grains and a small jug of shelf stable milk. “Almost as much as rent.” He’s seen less and less dairy and meat products over the past year.

Cook is emblematic of the customers Potter sees coming to the six permanent and 15 mobile food banks she oversees in Pierce County. Pre-pandemic, her customers were the unemployed or people with an unforeseen expense, like a big car repair bill. Now, it’s retirees, young parents and fully employed adults.

“They’re people who have jobs, but because of the cost of living in Pierce County, they just can’t make ends meet and pay their rent, get their medicines,” Potter said. “Having to choose between feeding your kid or feeding yourself is a tough decision.”

In 2023, visits to Nourish’s food banks increased by 13 percent. In the first four months of 2024, numbers are up 20 percent compared with the same time in 2023.

Causes

Inflation has hit food banks coming and going. Food prices are driving more people to seek food assistance while incoming food donations have lessened. Like the public, food banks are spending more on food. And less food is coming in through the USDA’s emergency food assistance program , Potter said.

“Grocery stores are cutting back on what they’re stocking because prices are so high for food,” she said. Grocery stores often donate food that has exceeded its sell-by date but is still fit for human consumption. But less stock means fewer donations.

Nourish buys between 12 and 15 semi truck loads of food per year. Products like canned corn and soups.

“In the past, we could do that with about $500,000,” Potter said. “Now those same truckloads cost about 30 to 40 percent more.”

Nourish increased its food budget to $700,000 in 2024 but, Potter said, the food bank needs $1.8 million to meet current demand.

COVID

“When COVID first hit, our numbers went through the roof,” Potter said. “And then thanks to things like the child tax credit, we saw our numbers normalized and go down quite a bit, which really saved us because we just couldn’t keep up with the rush.”

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily increased and expanded the already-existing child tax credit, even to families with no income. That program has now ended.

During COVID, individual donors helped bridge gaps, Potter said.

“The Pierce County community, wow, the donors, people stepped up and they were helping their neighbors in need during that crisis,” she said. “And they were very generous.”

Now, donors are seeing their wallets pinched and, Potter said, donor fatigue is setting in.

Nourish relies on both individual as well as larger entity donors.

“We wouldn’t be here without the private foundations, family foundations, corporate foundations that choose to help out with food purchases,” Potter said.

Emergency Food Network

Five miles away and inside Lakewood-based Emergency Food Network’s warehouse, nine volunteers are converting a 1,700-pound crate of cooked, frozen red beans into 1-pound bags.

Although it has its own small food delivery program, EFN is mostly a clearing house for 75 partner food pantries. Together, they had 2.7 million customer visits in 2023 — a record high number in the organization’s 40-year existence.

“We just had our biggest month ever in February ... over 200,000 visits in a month, across the network,” said the organization’s CEO, Michelle Douglas.

Along with managing Pierce County’s USDA’s programs, EFN also acts as a distribution system in the case of a disaster.

On this day, a steady line of trucks were moving in and out of the agency’s headquarters.

EFN’s warehouse is filled with crates of canned chicken, mixed vegetables, bags of rice. Nearby are boxes of fresh apples, blackberries and mangoes. There’s even a pallet of Windex — a cleaning product for which food stamps won’t pay.

Impressive as it is, there’s a building across 92nd Street South that dwarf’s EFN’s warehouse — the organization’s brand new 21,700-square-foot warehouse. On Thursday, it was empty, save for a worker finalizing electrical work.

Parents in need

The need for food assistance in Pierce County isn’t abating. Compared with 2019, 2023 saw a 100 percent increase in visits, Douglas said.

“That’s kind of a staggering number, because we are not seeing a commensurate increase in how much food we’re distributing,” she said.

The fastest growing group of customers is young parents, Douglas said.

“And often in families that have two or three or four jobs, they’re just not making it on a daily basis,” she said.

Purchasing power

Most of the food EFN distributes is donated. However, the organization purchases about $2 million in goods annually, Douglas said. That’s up from $400,000 pre-pandemic.

EFN is always looking for ways to reduce costs, Douglas said. Purchasing pre-bagged rice versus 50-pound bags that need to be repacked by staff saves an estimated $8,000 per 40,000-pound truckload.

Fresh produce is the most requested food item, Douglas said, and it’s crucial for a healthy diet, particularly diabetes prevention. But even if produce is donated, what was once a $750 truck trip from eastern Washington is now $1,200, she said.

Hunger Awareness

EFN’s new warehouse will start filling up in May — just in time for Hunger Awareness Month. It kicks off with a Hunger Walk on May 4 at Fort Steilacoom Park.

EFN is focusing on May because when the school year ends, so will free and reduced lunch and breakfast programs in Pierce County affecting some 70,000 kids, according to Douglas.

“We see a tremendous influx of visitors this time of year,” she said. “So we really looked at May to bring hunger Awareness Month to the forefront.”

Some 2,200 volunteers help ease EFN’s workload in a given year, Douglas said. That’s down from 2,800 in 2019. Much of their work centers around repacking huge crates of food into smaller, customer-sized portions. Apples arriving from eastern Washington need to be sorted, for example.

Despite the turmoil, EFN and its partners have been paying more attention to Pierce County’s diverse populations and the food they are familiar with.

“I’ve seen this across the network — a big focus on getting food to the people that they recognize,” she said. “When we think about what’s the greatest indicator of home, it’s often food.”

On Thursday, a woman still wearing her house cleaning uniform smiled when she found a bag of harina inside the Nourish truck. The cornmeal is used in tortillas.

Douglas urges anyone in need of food or other services to call the 211 information line.

“We have ways for people to get connected with bus routes, all of the different pieces so that people can get food in their communities when they need it where they need it,” she said.