Food insecurity increasing above supply and donations at Kitsap food banks

During a time of year that is usually characterized by an overflow of donations in the spirit of giving, Kitsap County food banks are experiencing food shortages as the demand for services outpaces supply.

When Bremerton Foodline’s new executive director, Cori Kauk, worked at a food bank in Issaquah, she said the donation doorbell never stopped ringing during the holidays. Staff would stay two to three hours after closing with the lights down and doors locked to organize all of the products flowing in the door and there would always be backstock to fill future gaps.

That hasn’t been the case for her staff in Bremerton early this winter.

Foodline ran out of rice, soup and shelf-stable milk last week, Kauk said. Any food donations coming in are going directly to the shopping floor after being sorted, and what supplies are on the shelves are “pretty lean.”

“The holiday season is traditionally a time of greater need and we're certainly seeing that again this year,” said Charlie Thompson, executive director of the Fishline food bank in Poulsbo. “The need that we're seeing coming to our food bank is incredible — it's so much higher than just even a year ago. In November, we saw better than a 40 percent increase in folks coming for food, and it's safe to say that the food is going out quicker than it's coming in,” though the bank still has enough stocks of their staple items."

Because children go on a two-week winter break from school in December, “this is a time of year where food banks are often doing youth feeding programs or letting people have extra bags of groceries, kid-friendly food, and we won't be able to do that unless something drastic happens in the next week or two,” Kauk said.

Meeting the needs of the community has been difficult for food banks like Bremerton Foodline for a number of reasons, ranging from increased demand, shortened supply and thinning donations.

In May, Bremerton Foodline began opening its doors to shoppers once a week instead of once a month to expand its service, which in turn increased demand dramatically, Kauk said. In October of 2022, the food bank saw 370 visitors, but this October, the number of visitors shot up to 1,800.

Reforming the shopping environment to a more comfortable setting with less management has also impacted the amount of food people are taking from the shelves, Kauk said. “People are also feeling like they have scarcity and not enough food in their homes, so not only are people coming in more, they're probably feeling like they need more. And then also if they see our shelves kind of lean, that probably increases that scarcity feeling.”

For many, that sense of food scarcity has been prominent after emergency COVID-19 pandemic-era boosts to SNAP benefits were cut in March, Thompson said.

“Month over month, the need kept increasing and as we progressed through this year, the costs of food, gas, housing, all of those things are just making it more and more difficult for folks to make ends meet.”

Increased cost of living is only leading more shoppers to the food bank, Thompson said, but it could be leading to fewer donations to the food bank as well.

“Someone that might have been able to donate monetarily or with a food drive a year ago might find themselves not able to because their own costs have gone so much and we continue to see new people coming to us for assistance, which is not a good sign for the direction things are going,” Thompson said. “We have been running a little behind our budget of where we would like to be, and while we're seeing an uptick in November and carrying into December, it's not where we expected or needed to be.”

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Bremerton Foodline hasn’t come close to meeting the monthly financial goals they’ve set in the past, Kauk said. Before the pandemic, the food bank saw 10 to 15 percent more food donations too, seeing a consistent haul of about 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of food per month, but have only received about 5,000 to 7,000 pounds per month recently.

For some food banks, it’s taken drastic circumstances to fill the gap.

After the South Kitsap Helpline’s basement was flooded on Dec. 5, destroying 20,000 pounds of dry foods, the Port Orchard food bank has seen their stocks nearly replenished through an outpouring of donations, said Executive Director Jennifer Hardison.

“But prior to that, we were definitely having a hard time keeping food on our shelves. … We were on four news channels last week, so people in our community that really didn't know about our food bank heard about us for the first time.”

A lack of visibility through insufficient communication with community donors has also contributed to the fact that donations aren’t keeping up with community needs, Kauk said. Bremerton Foodline hasn’t kept a database of direct contact information with its donors until recently, so “our community doesn't realize how many people we're feeding and how much food's going out the door in our organization.”

“The typical food donations are not meeting the need, but it's a good problem to have — it tells me that we're doing the right thing, right? We're getting more food to people who need it,” Kauk said. “It's just we haven't done a good job on the community relations end.”

Food banks like the ShareNet Food Bank in Kingston are also receiving less food from partner suppliers than they used to, said Executive Director Mark Ince. Though they still receive valuable stocks, the food bank sometimes has to purchase about 70 to 80 percent of their food on their own. So far, ShareNet has been able to keep up with demand thanks to a generous local donor base.

“I think for all the food banks, the question is long-term sustainability,” Ince said. “Hopefully, so many of these factors are going to sort of alter in the next few years: the ability of those partners to procure food again is going to improve, supply chain issues are going to lessen, fuel cost is going to lessen.”

In the meantime, food banks like the Bremerton Foodline are looking towards food drives to make up the gap between need and donations. The Bremerton food bank will host a Fill the Shelves Food Drive on Saturday, Dec. 16, from 9 a.m. to noon, where donors can drive through its headquarters at 1600 12th St. and drop off supplies through the back of their building where volunteers will greet them.

Though need may be overtaking food supply and donations, the holiday season has still proven a time of generosity and increased giving for Kitsap food banks, but the need will prevail while increased donations may not.

“November and December are the best months to work for food banks because people are thinking about charity, it's just that time of the year that folks think about giving and helping those who are less fortunate in their communities,” Hardison said. “But after January, things kind of go back to the rest of the 10 months, which are slim-pickings sometimes.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap County food banks are battling increasing food scarcity