TAUNTON — Food pantries and free-meal centers in Taunton are seeing a marked increase in the number of people coming through their doors.
“Net demand is overwhelming,” said Normand Grenier, director of Matthew Mission food pantry inside First Parish Church at 76 Church Green.
Grenier, 71, has run the non-profit Matthew Mission since 2021 when Mark Cook — who, in 2013, established a basement-level “warming center” with temporary shelter, donuts, coffee and supplies for people experiencing homelessness — was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Grenier, a former Catholic priest now retired from his position as president of the Quincy-based non-profit NeighborWorks Housing Solutions, said the number of people coming in for non-perishable food products has tripled since 2021.
How bad has food inflation been?
The national inflation yardstick known as the consumer price index, or CPI, rose just 3.4% for all items in 2023, and food inflation was even lower than that last year — when grocery prices rose just 1.3%, according to the Labor Department.
That's markedly lower than the past few years. But people aren't necessarily feeling less pain at the checkout line thanks to the accumulated hit from the price hikes over the last few years.
In 2022 the CPI for all items rose 6.5%, including a whopping 11.8% increase for groceries.
And that's on top of massive inflation in 2021 when inflation for all items was 7% — the largest December to December percent change since 1981. That includes a 6.5% increase in the price of groceries, the largest year-over-year increase since 2008 — until, 2022, of course.
And although egg prices, since last year, have fallen by more than 20% and lettuce prices by 17%, according to a Washington Post report, grocery prices, overall, have risen 25% in the last four years — forcing more and more lower-income working people and senior citizens on fixed incomes to seek relief and assistance from local food pantries.
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Matthew Mission sees surge in demand
Grenier said between 30 and 35 adults used to stop by on any given Saturday morning. Now, he said, that number is usually closer to 100.
“Our max so far has been 109,” said Grenier, who is the only salaried employee at the non-profit.
Demand, he said, has intensified so that as of this April the pantry is cutting back days of operation from every Saturday morning to every other Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
He also notes that in contrast to those years when Matthew Mission was strictly a warming center, no more than 5% of needy individuals currently coming in for cans and boxes of food are in fact homeless.
“I come here when I’m struggling or running low on food,” said Taunton resident Elias Pizarro.
Pizarro, 53, was born in Puerto Rico and has lived in the Silver City for 30 years. He came in on a recent Saturday by himself walking with a cane and carrying a single bag. He said he took a bus to get to the church.
“There are times when we had nothing, and I walked to that door. It makes a difference,” he said.
Grenier said he welcomes monetary and material donations, but stressed that canned goods should not have an expired date: “A lot of people think they’re doing us a favor by emptying out their pantries of old cans,” he said.
First Parish Church also houses the affiliated Chalice Thrift Store managed and operated by Danielle Hazen. The Matthew Mission pantry serves residents of Taunton, Raynham, Dighton, Easton, Norton, Rehoboth and Middleboro.
Grenier says it was veteran City Councilor John McCaul who initially put him in touch with a larger food pantry operation being run out of North Baptist Church on Bay Street, the latter of which collects food supplies from the Greater Boston Food Bank.
“Without the North Baptist Church we don’t have a food pantry — they’re the most generous people I’ve ever met,” he said.
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Taunton’s largest food pantry
John Coppinger said it was his idea to establish a food pantry when he was hired nearly 16 years ago as pastor of North Baptist Church, located not far from Interstate 495 and Myles Standish Industrial Park.
Coppinger, 73, and longtime volunteer Ellen Hurteau said they remember years past when no more than 50 people would file into the church’s Fellowship Hall to receive food.
As the years progressed so did the recipients: Coppinger says during the past year those numbers have doubled so that 400 to 500 people are now routinely shuttled in and out of the pantry each Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The Bay Street food pantry has become increasingly busy as word has spread that anyone from any locale is welcome. Coppinger and Hurteau say they get a large contingent of Brockton residents and visitors from as far away as Everett.
Coppinger says he and his pantry volunteers also make weekly food deliveries to senior citizens living in Norton’s Woodland Meadows Apartments public housing development, as well as to at least 15 migrant families being housed at nearby Extended Stay America Suites on South Washington Street in Norton.
Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities press secretary Kevin Connor confirmed that a portion of the Norton hotel has been providing temporary housing to migrant and other at-risk families, as part of the state’s Emergency Assistance program.
At least half of those emergency assistance families staying in the Norton hotel, Connor said, are “new arrivals” to the United States.
Coppinger, who grew up in a Fall River housing project, says his truck makes weekly trips to Boston to pick up boxes of potatoes, carrots, crunchy snacks, pork loins and as many as 400 Tyson brand frozen chickens.
He also credits Bimbo Bakeries USA in Middleboro for providing surplus bread and pastries: “They’ve been very good to us,” he said.
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Church hope to build separate food pantry
Coppinger said he’ll submit an application for a Greater Boston Food Bank grant to build a separate building that would expressly be used for the food pantry.
He said his non-profit pantry previously qualified for and was awarded a $40,000 grant to purchase new freezers and refrigerators and noted that McCaul facilitated the process.
McCaul, who serves on Matthew Mission’s board of directors, said Taunton’s former American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) coordinator Karen Pemberton deserves credit for alerting Coppinger to the Greater Boston Food Bank’s grant program.
“We all need to work together for people who need help,” McCaul said, “but at the same time we need to be careful that people don’t double dip and take advantage, because when they do they’re taking food off the table of people who need it.”
McCaul said the creation of a citywide database keeping track of everyone who requests and receives free food would help prevent such occurrences.
Increased demand at St. Vincent de Paul
The food pantry at Taunton’s St. Vincent de Paul Society on Washington Street distributes food items, by appointment only, on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8-10:30 a.m. and Wednesday from 5-6 p.m.
“We’ve had to limit applications to Monday, Wednesday and Friday instead of five days,” said 12-year volunteer Jean Desrosiers. “It’s become so overwhelming within the last month or two.”
Desrosiers said a fleet of vans and two trucks pick up food from at least half a dozen cooperating grocery stores in addition to making trips to Greater Boston Food Bank.
Some of that food, she said, is shared with Our Daily Bread Food and Resource Center’s soup kitchen inside St. Thomas Episcopal Church on High Street.
Desrosiers said the St. Vincent de Paul pantry provides food to residents of Taunton, Berkeley, Dighton, Raynham and Easton.
“We’re very area-specific,” she said.
Greater Boston Food Bank ramps up
Gary Roy, assistant director of public relations for Greater Boston Food Bank, said before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic his food bank was receiving quarterly reports that 300,000 eastern Massachusetts residents were benefiting each month from cooperating food pantries.
That number, he said, has since risen to 600,000 residents a month: “It ramped up and hasn’t gone down since,” he said.
Our Daily Bread serving meals to more seniors
Our Daily Bread executive director Maribeth Ferreira says, “We’re not a pantry, but we give out food like a pantry quite often.”
Ferreira and resource coordinator Glen Whittaker say that their volunteers in 2023 distributed 3,640 carry out “community baskets” containing a week’s worth of food. They said the soup kitchen in 2023 provided more than 54,000 freshly cooked meals served either on premises or to go as compared to fewer than 42,000 in 2022.
Senior citizens on fixed retirement incomes, they said, have been turning out in increasing numbers for a weekly “Elder Lunch.”
“It’s gone through the roof,” Ferreira said. “The seniors are scared. Some of them can’t afford their medicine and food.”
Up until the last three years, Whittaker said, homeless people accounted for 95% of meal visitors. That percentage, he said, is now only 50%.
TacT meal center running on all cylinders
Taunton Area Community Table (TacT) continues to serve freshly cooked lunches four days a week in Whittenton’s former St. John’s Episcopal Church on Bay Street.
TacT director Wendy Berry said they recently had to discontinue a monthly food pantry after the retirement of former director Michaeline Saladyga.
Berry says she and her volunteers are now serving hot meals to as many as 100 mostly working class and poor people each Monday through Thursday: “That’s at least a 30% increase over last year,” she said.
“We get very few homeless people,” Berry said. “But any one of our guests could be homeless at any moment.”
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