January is in the books here at Dublin Food Pantry. Now that we’re in our new building AND it’s a new year, we can start to figure out what that means. So far, it means we’re busy. We served 842 pantry visits in January 2023. This January we served 1,092 pantry visits–a nearly 30 percent increase!
We aren’t quite bursting at the seams, though. When we moved to our new space, we expanded our operating hours to be open 4 days a week instead 3. So despite the increased numbers, our foot traffic has been pretty comfortable at about 64 family visits per day. After serving just over 11,000 pantry visits in 2023, we are on an early pace to top 13,000 visits this year.
We served 895 unique households in January, up from 632 during the same month last year. That’s an increase of over 41 percent. We served 2,744 unique households in all of 2023. Taken all together, we distributed enough food to replace about 62,000 meals in January.
What does it take to make this all possible? Tons of food! Thanks to Mid-Ohio Food Collective, we can get a lot of food at steeply discounted rates. How steep? Sometimes it’s so cheap it’s actually free. Sort of–it does cost us time and fuel to pick it up. But our overall buying power is pretty impressive.
Consider this: our grocery bill to distribute those 62,000 meals was LESS THAN $1,600! That means our food costs work out to about 2.5 cents per meal. That’s 10 meals for a quarter! Cover our food costs for a week (usually around $500) and we can buy food for over 15,000 meals. To kick in for the grocery bill, click the button on the left below.
We also stock personal care items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, deodorant and other necessities. For a complete list, click the button on the right.