Wooster Hope Center planning to hit the road

The Wooster Hope Center plans to hit the road soon when it debuts its mobile food pantry in the coming months.

Over the past year, Wooster Hope Center leaders discussed adding a mobile food pantry to its services, Executive Director Richard Frazier said. The truck was recently delivered, and it is being prepped for service.

The food pantry on wheels will give the Wooster Hope Center the ability to augment the work it does with the Greater Wayne County Food Pantry by taking food to people around Wayne County.

While the Wooster Hope Center distributed more than 2 million pounds of food to more than 15,000 Wayne County families in 2021, most of that was done through the food pantry on Wooster’s south side. Now volunteers will be able to take food to residents unable to make the trip to Wooster.

Frazier said he’s hopeful to have the mobile food pantry on the road in June, though there’s a chance it could happen in May.

“We’re so happy to be able to do more, and that’s what it’s about, helping our neighbors in need,” Frazier said.

Frazier got the idea from the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank, which uses a mobile, pop-up food pantry. The truck will allow for regular and routine food distribution at various locations in the county. But because the vehicle allows for greater flexibility, it could be dispatched if a community were to experience some kind of disaster or if another pandemic were to strike.

The truck is customized to handle pallets to hold the food to be distributed. At the Greater Wayne County Food Pantry, people walk through a line and receive bags of food. But the way the truck will be configured, volunteers will hand out boxes of food. And because the truck is refrigerated, when milk and ice cream are available, they can be stored safely for transport.

The truck also will benefit those who use the community food boxes around the county, which are filled by the Wooster Community Kitchen. Director Matt Allen said his group explored the possibility of a food truck in 2019. However, those plans were put on hold in 2020 when the pandemic hit.

Frazier reached out to Allen in late 2020 for ways to work together, which resulted in the Wooster Hope Center providing some shelf-stable food that Allen and his group put in the boxes. The two later talked about partnering with the mobile food pantry to bring better nutrition and options to Wayne County residents outside Wooster, Allen said.

“We are delighted to see this idea come to life in 2022 with the newly built mobile pantry,” Allen said. “We are excited to partner with the Wooster Hope Center to bring the services they provide to those that lack transportation. By working together, we have been able to achieve our mutual goals of helping to reduce hunger in our community.”

The mobile pantry will visit West Salem and Rittman one day a month to start. The goal is to eventually reach as many different communities as possible in Wayne County, Frazier said. When that happens, the Wooster Hope Center will need more volunteers.

To learn more about the mobile food pantry, call 330-683-2242.