Fishes & Loaves in Cashiers and Highlands Emergency Council and Highlands Food Pantry have all reported need for assistance as food pantry numbers continue to rise.
“MANNA came up and did a survey on the pantries. Everybody is growing, the need’s growing,” said Bonnie Dayton, director of Highlands Food Pantry.
All pantries have seen increases in those using their services. Fishes & Loaves served 163 more individuals in February than January, Highlands Food Pantry reported 51 new families in January, and Highlands Emergency Council served 1,402 individuals in January compared with 1,744 individuals in February.
“We have seen a big increase, especially for food,” said Marie Johnson, vice president of the Emergency Council.
Food is usually the bread and butter of local pantries’ supplies, although dog and cat food, personal hygiene needs, toiletries, clothes, furniture, and more can always be used, along with donated non-perishable goods and volunteers. Dayton said a huge need at Highlands Food Pantry is pasta and sauce so they can offer more complete meals than canned beans.
“We need toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and feminine hygiene products. That’s all expensive,” said Susie Davis, a member of Fishes & Loaves board of directors. “We’ll take anything that can help people save some money on food and other needs.”
Fishes & Loaves now serves Jackson and Macon Counties and Oconee County in South Carolina. Highlands Emergency Council and the Highlands Food Pantry cater primarily to Macon Counties.
Fishes & Loaves and Highlands Emergency Council are part of The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, which helps them offset costs for purchasing food. The Highlands Food Pantry, on the other hand, is not enrolled in TEFAP. This puts an additional strain on Highlands Food Pantry to purchase their stock or rely on community donations.
Johnson said the Emergency Council relies on TEFAP or they wouldn’t be able to afford food for the community.
“We purchase a lot of food on top of TEFAP to make it last weeks,” Johnson said. This includes potato chips, cereal, and occasional sweets alongside dietary staples so members don’t have a plain box.
The Emergency Council has the widest available openings. They are open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday from 8 to 1. Members can come once a week for food, but any day for other needs. Fishes & Loaves is open Monday and Thursday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Highlands Food Pantry is open 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
T.J. Smith, executive director of International Friendship Center, which runs the Food Pantry, said MANNA Food Bank out of Asheville “has seen about a 27 percent increase in use over the last year and a half, but they have not seen an increase in resources. They’re trying to meet increased need with the resources they had three years ago because they have limits to what they can get, too.”
Highlands Food Pantry had to limit their availability to cut back on costs due to this increase in clients across the board.
In January of 2023, Smith said the Food Pantry added 306 new families in 2022 compared with 417 in 2023. Smith said this translated into a nearly 400 percent increase in food, or a shift from around $4,000 to $11,000, until April, when the pantry changed rules. Before, clients were able to come once a week, but Highlands Food Pantry had to limit them to twice a month, while the pantry also added signage encouraging clients to be mindful of their use.
“On one hand, these measures had the desired effect and we saw the stress on our finances begin to ease. However, on the other hand, some of that reduction may have stemmed from clients feeling a sense of guilt and halting their use of the pantry, even in situations when they needed food,” Smith wrote in a monthly newsletter.
Smith said there’s “such a stigma on those who use these programs that many people get pushed to a point where they are dangerously food insecure or dangerously unhoused,” and closing availability could worsen that.
Highlands Food Pantry worked with MountainWise, a fellow nonprofit addressing healthy lives, to conduct a survey on a population of 31 Spanish-speaking clients. The survey found that 27 those surveyed reported they often or sometimes didn’t have enough to eat in the past year, 22 adults skipped meals or reduced portion size because of lacking access to food in past year, 21 were unable to eat enough to address hunger needs because of lacking access to adequate food at least once in the last year.
They did another study on 19 households with children under 18 years old that found 17 reported sometimes or often not being able to feed healthy food to children as a result of lacking access to healthy food options, eight reported children often or sometimes not eating enough because of lacking access to adequate food, five reported children skipping meals in the last year, and seven reported children receiving free or reduced lunch services through the school in the past year.
Smith said many of their clients return because they need to. Therefore, he, and other organizations, will do what they need as well.