FEAST Food Pantry

Happy Thursday everybody. I'm Charlie Belcher coming to you from Palm Harbor today. Feast Food Pantry. They've been around since the late 1980s making sure that the food insecure in this north Pinellas area including even some of southern Pasco has the food they need and supplies they need and some services as well. Tamara is the executive director of Feast Food Pantry. Oh feast is an acronym. Now I opened this door let me see if I can walk all the way through it. You got it. It was a food emergency and services team. Yes that's it. Yes all right. Tell me about this Feast Food Pantry. 1989 is up in the 30s? 1989 exactly yes we've been around since then and we're a food pantry in Palm Harbor. We're here to help families that just need a little extra help. Last year we actually provided food and personal care items to 62,000 people. Wow 62,000 people you know because we you say Palm Harbor and Palm Harbor has a reputation of being an affluent area but like all of our areas in the greater Tampa Bay area there are there are food industry insecurity everywhere. Right exactly. There is no community that is 100% affluent or 100% non-affluent. Right right right. These are just people who need a little extra help. You know the cost of everything has gone up housing, groceries, rent and so people just need some extra help to help put food on their table so we're here to do that and we make sure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect that's paramount. How does it work here at Feast? So clients come up it's a drive-up model where they stay in their cars which is easier for them because they have you know some people have mobility challenges or have kids in the car so they come up and our volunteers go down they greet them with kindness they build a relationship with them and then the clients receive about a four-day supply of food and they get eggs and milk and produce and shelf-stable items. Where does the food come from? So we have a collaboration with Feeding Tampa Bay and we pick up from retail stores and that's where we get all that meat that I spoke of in the produce and then we get donations from community members, churches, organizations that do food drives for us, schools so the community helps us a ton and we're so grateful for their support. Also St. Pete Free Clinic we get milk from them as well and some other shelf-stable items so we really can only sustain because of the support we have. And you're able to offer certain services as well now? Yes yeah I'm excited about that that's something new so we have the Bay Care team comes on site and they do health care checks so they do BMI screens and cholesterol screens and that's been very very impactful for our clients because you know it's all free so they come here to get the food and they need other services so we're giving them that access. How can people help? People can help by contacting going to our website if they want to donate we're always in need of food items like peanut butter, cereal, soup we always need those they can come here and donate they can also donate monetarily because we purchase a ton of food because we've had such an increase in demand. And that website? That website is www.feastfoodpantry.org feastfoodpantry.org feastfoodpantry.org food emergency and services team. You got it everybody knows right good in Palm Harbor Charlie Belcher Fox 13 News