The Gateway Food Pantry in Arnold expects its clients list to grow this year, executive director Patrick McKelvey said.
He said the pantry, formerly called the Arnold Food Pantry, held 4,562 regular food distributions last year, a 17.32 percent increase from 2023. The food pantry, 2024 Key West Drive, provides regular food distributions to clients every Thursday.
He also said the pantry had 507 emergency food distributions last year, a record for the organization and a 47.4 percent increase from 2023. An emergency distribution is offered to anyone seeking help one time. After a person receives an emergency distribution, pantry employees and volunteers look into whether the person is eligible to become a regular client or if the person can seek help from a different food pantry.
McKelvey said the pantry served 12,216 people through combined regular and emergency distributions in 2024.
“We are expecting to see more clients in 2025 than we did in 2024,” he said. “It would be my guess that (2025) will be our highest year ever, but there is no way to say whether we will go up 10, 20 or 30 percent. I wish I knew that.”
McKelvey said he believes the demand for services will increase this year because regular distributions rose in every quarter last year.
He said the pantry had 1,005 distributions from January through March last year, and the distributions increased to 1,043 between April through June. The pantry held 1,216 distributions from July through September, and the distributions increased to 1,298 between October and December.
McKelvey said the 1,298 food distributions from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 were a five-year high.
“There are no signs that will drop off,” he said.
McKelvey said the surge of people seeking assistance began in mid-July 2024, and the pantry ended up holding 345 food distributions that month.
In August 2024, the pantry had 480 food distributions, the highest one-month total since 528 distributions in January 2020. He also said the pantry distributed food to 103 clients on Aug. 29, which was the first time more than 100 people received food in a single day since April 16, 2020.
McKelvey said food distributions slowed slightly in September to 391, but the distributions surged again in October, with 517.
“We generally see an uptick in the summer, especially during the months I believe correlates with when students do not receive free or reduced lunch through school,” he said.
McKelvey said in September, the pantry had 78 emergency distributions, a higher total than any single month in 2023 and topped August’s 52 emergency distributions. However, he said the emergency distributions leveled off in October.
In 2024, the pantry made 91 emergency distributions from January through March; 128 from April through June; 174 from July through September; and 114 from October through December, he said, adding that the 174 emergency distributions in the third quarter of 2024 was a pantry record.
“We use those (emergency distribution) contacts to sign them up for our services if they are eligible,” McKelvey said. “If they live outside of our service area, we connect them with their local food pantry. If they say they are homeless or need mental health services, we try to connect them with a resource in the community that may be able to assist them.”
Preparing for 2025
McKelvey said while more people sought services last year, the pantry saw a reduction in donations.
The annual food drives, such as the Boy Scouts’ Scouting for Food and U.S. Postal Service’s Stamp Out Hunger, did not bring in as much as past years, and the pantry received fewer personal care items from the Girl Scouts’ April Showers collection, he said.
“I don’t think that is a situation that is unique to our pantry,” McKelvey said. “Typically, when we see more clients, that means our donors have less money available to them because inflation impacts everyone.”
Despite receiving fewer donations, the pantry is still in a good position to combat the food needs of the community, he said. “We are not going to decrease the service we provide to our clients. We did adjust our operations to ensure our clients still get everything they have gotten before we started serving more people.”
McKelvey said the pantry has increased the funding it has budgeted to purchase food to supplement the donations it has received. The pantry plans to spend between $15,000 and $20,000 to purchase food, which is about double what it spent last year to buy additional food.
He also said when the pantry seeks grant funding this year, it will request funds to purchase food for clients instead of seeking money to help with capital improvement projects, like repaving the parking lot, purchasing new refrigerators or replacing HVAC systems.
“The most important thing is the clients, so that is where we are putting our focus in 2025,” McKelvey said.
Donations
McKelvey said the pantry’s largest client group is children between the ages of 6 and 18, so those who want to donate food should consider what children are likely to eat.
He said donations of canned pasta, cereal, Pop Tarts, breakfast bars and macaroni and cheese are among the most popular for children.
“Think about what you would buy for your kids; that is exactly what our food pantry needs,” he said. “Many parents come to the pantry. My theory is no one wants to go hungry, but when people see their children affected by food insecurity, that is when they say they need to get help. I think several people avoided utilizing the food pantry, but when it started impacting their kids, they started coming to our pantry to receive support.”
McKelvey also said meals for entire families, like Hamburger Helper and boxes of pasta, are also needed.
“People are not just preparing meals for themselves,” he said. “They are preparing meals for the whole family.”
Another way to support the pantry is to donate items to the Treasure Shoppe, the organization’s resale shop, or to purchase items from the shop.
“Their revenue has gone up, and their donations have increased year by year over the last five years,” McKelvey said. “I am proud of what the Treasure Shoppe is doing. A donation to the Treasure Shoppe is certainly one of the ways you can support the Gateway Food Pantry. Every dollar raised by the Treasure Shoppe directly supports the Gateway Food Pantry. It is one of our major sources of funding at the pantry.”
The Gateway Food Pantry offers food assistance to residents of the Fox C-6 and Windsor C-1 school districts and to those who live in the 63127 and 63128 ZIP codes in south St. Louis County.
Those seeking assistance or wanting to donate may visit gatewayfoodpantry.org or call 636-287-3663. Gateway Food Pantry is open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.