WACO, Texas (KWTX) – The Central Texas Food Bank is building a new facility in Waco, and food pantries are hopeful the new location will help better serve those in need.
“We have one facility in Austin, which is the Southern part of our service area,” Central Texas Food Bank CEO, Sari Vatske, said. “When we looked at the data, when we looked at the population growth along the I-35 corridor, it became clear to us that Waco was the best place to build a facility.”
The Central Texas Food Bank, or CTFB, is based in Austin and stocks the shelves of most food pantries in Central Texas.
“About 95% of our food comes from the Central Texas Food Bank,” Alicia Jallah, the executive director for Helping Hands Ministries of Belton, said. “We really rely heavily on not only their shelf stable foods, but also their fresh produce.”
CTFB delivers truckloads of food to pantries in 21 counties. Shepherd’s Heart, based in Waco, is a partner with CTFB and is the largest faith-based pantry in the area with about 18 mobile distributions a month.
“I get four or five truckloads of food a week just so we can keep the pace for what we need to do in the community,” Robert Gager, CEO of Shepherd’s Heart, said.
The need in the community continues to grow. Jallah said the pantry serves 650 households a week, which has doubled over the past two years.
Gager said Shepherd’s Heart served more than 100,000 families last year.
Right now, food pantries receive truckloads of deliveries from Austin, meaning trucks have to travel an hour to an hour-and-a-half or more to get fresh produce, staples or other items to local food banks.
With the increase in demand, food pantries hope CTFB’s new Waco facility will provide easier and quicker access to food.
“What I see is how it’s going to prove our whole ability to serve this area,” Gager said. “Instead of coming all the way from Austin, it’ll be a warehouse here so that we can provide better service. Once we set something in motion to bring things directly here rather than stop in Austin, it’s going to start saving money.”
“We’re really hoping that this Waco location will create better access and just more distribution to us, that it will be a little bit closer than the Austin location to be able to get more fresh foods into our pantry faster,” Jallah said.
The facility will also provide several services and programs directly to the community.
“What’s really exciting is addition to on-site community services for the neighbors we serve, like nutrition education, assistance with federal benefits…we will also have a free market,” Vatske said.
A big reason CTFB chose Waco for its next location is childhood hunger. Vatske said, in the northern part of Central Texas, they found 90% of children who are eligible for free and reduced lunch after school or in the summertime, don’t access it because there is not a commercial kitchen facility able to serve.
When the facility is complete, the commercial volunteer kitchen will be able to serve thousands a day.
“We’ll be able to prepare up to 10,000 meals a day for schools and during the summertime for kids,” she said. “That was really one of the big, the major impetus for us building this facility.”
Shepherd’s Heart said they have food programs for kids year-round, so, with CTFB’s new facility, it will make it easier for Shepherd’s Heart to provide meals to those in need.
The new Waco facility is expected to be complete by the end of the year or early 2026.
Federal cuts impacting food pantries
KWTX also asked local pantries about possible federal cuts.
“We remain on top of the conversations that are happening right now,“ Vatske said. ”We’re very aware of the fact that the Farm Bill was extended on a continuing resolution, and so that needs to be reupped. Really, I think the threat to programs are the USDA commodities and the Snap program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program. Those are really the two key ones that we’re looking at monitoring. We’re definitely going to rely on the need of the community.”
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