Marshall County Mobile Food Pantry To Move To New Location

The Marshall County Family Resource Network will host the Mountaineer Food Bank Mobile Food Pantry at a new location at the Marshall County Fairgrounds this year to avoid city traffic congestion.

The next mobile food pantry will be held at the fairgrounds in Moundsville at 714 Myrtle Ave. on from 10-11:30 a.m. May 15. All traffic must enter through the fairground’s entrance on 12th Street.

Marshall County FRN Executive Director Kimberli Green said the location change was motivated by the traffic congestion in the city caused by the mobile food pantry’s previous location at East End Park. Green said the Marshall Co. Fair Board had hosted mobile food giveaways before, so they knew how to run traffic through the new location.

“We had our first mobile food pantry at the fairgrounds in April, and it was fantastic,” Green said. “We were able to run two lines of traffic through at the same time and had plenty of volunteers.”

Food pantry participants will enter the Fairgrounds on 12th Street and be directed to drive around the Event Center building to reach the mobile food pantry. Participants’ vehicles will be loaded with items at the mobile food pantry area, including meats, starches, vegetables and fruits.

“We’ll have everything sitting out, and participants will pull up and either open their trunk or unlock their back door so we can load the car up,” Green said. “People don’t even have to get out of their car. We just move them through so they stay in their car the whole time.”

In addition to the location change, the mobile food pantry’s time has been pushed an hour earlier from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Green said this change was made to accommodate the hot temperatures that occur later in the day during mobile food pantries held in the summer.

Mobile food pantry recipients must provide a West Virginia address to receive food. There are no other guidelines or eligibility requirements. Mobile food pantry volunteers will ask for a participant’s name, address and the number of people in their household to determine the amount of food to hand out.

With their highest-attended mobile food pantry serving 240 families last year, Green hopes to get the word out to the community regarding the location change to get attendance numbers back in that range.

“Our biggest giveaway was in November last year,” Green said. “When we did our first pantry this year at the new location in April, our numbers were a little lower, so we’re hoping we get those numbers back up as more people learn about the location and time change.”‘

The other mobile food pantry giveaways will be held on July 17, Sept. 18, Oct. 16 and Nov. 21. All 2025 food giveaways will be held at the fairgrounds except for the July giveaway, which will be located at the Valley Fork Baseball Fields due to the Marshall County Fair.

Anyone interested in volunteering for the mobile food pantry can contact the Marshall County FRN at 304-845-3300.