Food Bank or Food Pantry?
Sometimes you’ll hear people use these two terms interchangeably. But a food bank and a food pantry are two very different things.
A food bank is an organization that collects product from the food industry and food drives, inventories and stores it, and distributes it to agencies – such as food pantries, soup kitchens, Kids Cafes and shelters – that provide food directly to individuals in need. A food bank has the capacity to distribute millions of pounds of grocery product every year. A food bank will almost always have that term as part of its name, such as Second Harvest Food Bank.
Food banks make it easy for agencies to obtain nutritious food at low cost in the quantities they need for their clients. Individual agencies in northwest Pennsylvania depend on Second Harvest for most of the food they provide to those in need. The “Hunger in America 2006” study, commissioned by Feeding America, indicated that Second Harvest provides 82 percent of the food distributed by our member food pantries and 56 percent of the food distributed by member soup kitchens.
A food pantry is an individual site that distributes bags of food directly to those in need. A food pantry may be open two hours once a week or once a month, when people who live in a specified area may go there to receive groceries. A food pantry is a member agency of, and obtains food from, a food bank.