Hays County Food Bank sees higher demand for holiday food boxes this year
HAYS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — There’s a growing need for food assistance in Hays County right now.
As a result, the Hays County Food Bank increased the number of holiday food boxes it’s giving out this year by 300.
Even with that increase, it had to close registration early because it was at maximum capacity.
‘Smell like Thanksgiving’
For 17 years, the food bank has hosted its Holiday Meal Box Program.
“Marshmallows and your sweet potatoes, stuffing,” Hays County Food Bank Executive Director Lisa Young said. “Make it smell like Thanksgiving in your house.”
This year, it’s increasing the number of boxes from 1,500 to 1,800.
Young said they’ve noticed a higher demand recently.
“Many, many people need this. These are not the poorest of the poor,” Young said. “It’s families from just all across the board.”
Young said both rising grocery costs and SNAP benefits decreasing because pandemic emergency benefits ended, are turning more people to the food bank.
“We are now doing almost double what we were doing during COVID at this time in 2020,” Young said. “We’re serving twice as many people.”
On top of that, Young said more people in Hays County are food insecure.
She said nationwide, a little over 10% of people are food insecure.
But Young said in Hays County, that number is 11.8%
“We’re very needy, as far as food insecurity goes. It’s a growing county. We’ve got businesses bustling. We’ve got people moving here, but we also have a large percentage of people that are food insecure,” Young said.
Young said that comes out to be about 27,000 people.
“$16 million shortfall between what people here can afford to buy, versus how much food they would need to have a meal every day for every member of their family,” Young said.
Lori Rodriguez said thankfully she was able to sign up in time to get a holiday meal box.
“Super excited to be able to get this box because honestly, I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to do a turkey this year,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said she’s grateful she’ll get to spend this holiday surrounded by good food and family.
“Instead of cutting into my, you know, monthly grocery bills we’re getting this to help out,” Rodriguez said. “So this, you know, helps so much.”
A need to expand
With all that extra demand, Young said the food bank is looking to build a new facility to keep up.
“It’s way too small. It is 2,200 square feet. It’s a house that’s been converted into the food bank,” Young said. “We’re running over a million pounds of food through what used to be a carport.”
With a bigger space, Young said they could accept more trucks.
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“We could actually have a loading dock rather than just a road, you know. So that would be big for us to be able to distribute more foods, not just at our own location, but throughout the county,” Young said.
She said another benefit of a new space would be to offer a shopping experience for people.
“We would also have an element where people could come in and choose things and I think that would go a long way,” Young said.
Young said that would reduce food waste, because people would only be taking things they thought they could use.
“It would also increase the dignity,” she said. “Make it more of a shopping experience for those moms and kids that I was talking about that they could come in and pick something that’s meaningful to them.”
Young said they’ll start fundraising efforts in February 2024.
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