Open Door offers New Choice Pantry - Sedalia Democrat

Open Door offers New Choice Pantry - Sedalia Democrat

Hunger in the community is being addressed more efficiently with the expansion of the Open Door New Choice Food Pantry.

Open Door Food Pantry Executive Director Amanda K. Davis said Friday morning the newly redecorated and expanded pantry opened to the public Sept. 1. Open Door hosted an open house Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The new pantry allows those who need food services to choose their items off shelves much like a grocery store. The facility, at 111 W. Sixth St., offers 10,200 square feet including a large food warehouse behind the pantry.

“We serve about 100 families a day,” Davis said. “It averages between 1,550 to 1,700 families per month.”

 The New Choice Pantry has the addition of a second room and offers not only government food items, but foods donated by businesses in the community.

Davis said before opening the new pantry, Open Door workers would pack boxes for those picking up food, now the client can peruse the shelves and select their own groceries.

“Now they can come and they can choose what the right foods are for their families,” she added.

“I think it’s a wonderful improvement,” said Sabrina Shively, the pantry’s marketing and development director. “We’ve had a lot of good feedback from the community. People are really happy about selecting their own food and taking home what they’ll actually use.”

Jennifer Harker, pantry lead, said with the larger area they are able to serve more patrons.

“We’re serving more daily actually, with more dignity,” she added. “We are serving more produce and more meat (and) healthier choices.”

A Democrat article this week, “United Way helps with local food insecurity,” stated that Kate Hanlon Nutrition Program Associate with MU Extension offered a cooking class at the pantry.

Harker said Hanlon showed patrons how to cook with tofu and provided a recipe. Harker hopes the cooking class will be offered each month.

The Extension cooking class shows patrons how to incorporate the items they pick up from the pantry into recipes they can use for their families.

“We’re trying to help the community learn how to make more meals out of the ingredients,” Harker said. “Anybody can qualify for assistance. Any income actually, there will be certain income guidelines for the commodities. But (it’s for) anybody that’s having a difficult time.”

 Those interested in obtaining food for the New Choice Pantry can visit with Lead Case Manager Megan Simon or Case Manager Suzy Taylor from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

Simon said those applying should bring identification, names, birth dates and Social Security numbers for each person living in the household along with address verification.

“This is such a wonderful thing for the community,” Taylor said. “We’ve made so many changes and we are focusing now on the healthier aspects of eating. Where people can actually put things together for a meal. That’s what our aim was and I think we’ve done that.”

Simon and Taylor added they enjoy providing extra services to families beside food. The women also help clients with job opportunities by providing work clothes or steel-toed boots.

“That’s my favorite thing to do, because I think it just opens so many opportunities,” Simon said. “If we can help with that one step, if there’s income coming in, that can change your life.”

For those interested in donating to Open Door, Davis noted that Shively offers a Lunch Bunch Tour for the community that takes one on a tour of all three Open Door facilities; the food pantry, the soup kitchen and the thrift store.

“People can sign up for the tour and she’ll bring them around to all three of our buildings,” Davis said. “They end up at the kitchen and then they can eat with the patrons.”

“A lot of people aren’t familiar with the fact that we have a soup kitchen and thrift store and they definitely don’t know that we have such a large warehouse,” Shively said. “The point of the tour is to show them … all the extra work that is going in to make the food pantry run. Our food pantry takes a lot of resources and the soup kitchen helps a lot of people as well. We have services we can offer that a lot of people don’t know about.”

A ribbon Cutting is scheduled for Friday Oct. 26 for Open Door’s New Choice Pantry, 111 W. Sixth St.