It’s a chilly morning in November, and folks are getting out of their cars and hugging their coats a little tighter around them. They grab a cart and head inside to get their groceries for the month.
But they aren’t heading to a traditional grocery store. Instead they’re walking into the Food Bank Market in central Columbia that’s been open for just more than a year.
“This is going to be much more like someone coming in that's going to be shopping in a market, much like if they went to Aldis or Hy-Vee or someplace like that,” volunteer Gary Martin said. “Except you're not going to have to pay for it.”
Martin has been volunteering at the Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri for about five years. He’s retired and spends three to four days a week here.
He said that patrons grab a number when they come into the Market, check in with a volunteer to ensure they haven’t already used their monthly allotment and then are given a shopping list – essentially an overview of how many items they can take from each aisle based on their family size.
The Food Bank Market is an example of the food pantry choice model, and is a part of the Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri.
Unlike at many food banks where they’d be handed a bag of goods, shoppers can make choices based on what they like – pears or applesauce, hamburgers or salmon, black or pinto beans. Unlike at many food banks where they’d be handed a bag of goods.
“The guests not only get more variety, but it treats them with more dignity,” Martin said, “This is more much more like a grocery store where people just are coming in to get to selections they want, and I think they're happier with it, not only in terms of selections, but how it works with it that way, as well.”
Katie Adkins is the director of strategic communication for the Food Bank, which serves Boone County and 31 other counties in the state. She said the Food Bank converted an old grocery store into their new space, which made implementing the choice model a lot simpler.
“Food is personal. Food is so many things to so many people,” Adkins said. “So, when you can take home the items that are meaningful to you, that are right for your body, that are right for, you know, your history, your culture, you know, you can make the meals that matter to your family.”
The space also offers a lot more than just access to supplementary food. It has a warehouse for food sorting and storage, a demonstration kitchen where people can learn how to cook some of the foods they’re less familiar with – like lentils – and a built-in Compass Health clinic that offers primary health care.
Adkins said the Food Bank Market aims to get to the root of food insecurity by helping people connect to other needed services like healthcare, food stamps or even insurance enrollment, but the need for food remains high and is growing.
According to the USDA, 18 million households were food insecure in 2023. That’s up from 17 million households in 2022 and is significantly more than the 13.8 million households that were food insecure in 2020.
“During the pandemic, we saw fluctuating needs throughout, you know, there were some real highs, and I think everyone expected that we would return to normalcy, right?” Adkins said. “And that never exactly happened for us. We saw numbers increase, and then they have continued to kind of maintain that high.
Adkins said the Food Bank Market has been serving more than 11,000 people a month since it opened last November, and just this fall, service hit a ten-year high – helping 12,600 people in a single month. At just this one location in their service area.
She said it’s important to remember that food insecurity doesn’t mean that people have nothing. Instead people may need short term help, if they have a family emergency or issues with their car, or they just may not have enough of a paycheck to stretch throughout the entire month.
“I think most people would be surprised that their neighbors, their friends, their coworkers, probably have experienced food insecurity at some point,” Adkins said. “One in every seven Missourians is food insecure right now, and we know that it's a quiet challenge for many people. There's stigma around it. People don't want to talk about it, but it is prevalent in our community.”
She added that there are other, low barrier ways for people to access food from the Food Bank Market – even if they don't want to officially sign up for services.
At the front of the Market, before entering the shopping floor, is the "Sharing Room." It's here that an assortment of goods, such as overflow produce, day old breads and bananas near over ripening are placed.
The space is entirely anonymous – people don't have to sign in or have Boone County residency to take goods.
"Maybe you need a little bit of produce for the week, you know, pick up what we have there, and just get to know this space," Adkins said. "It's a friendly, community-driven space, but if it's something that is intimidating to you, it's okay to just stop by and check out the sharing room."
At the market, as visitors finish up their shopping – they head to tables where volunteers help bag groceries and make sure they’ve maximized their benefits.
One patron, Robert, pulls out a reusable shopping bag from his backpack and starts to pack up his goods for the day – sweet tea, some seafood and a few other snacks.
“I get a lot of help here. I like it,” Robert said.
He said he’s been getting food from the food bank for a couple of years and likes the new market. But, in the future, he hopes to volunteer doing “I don’t know. Whatever they give me or whatever I can do,” Robert said.
If he does, it’ll be evidence that the Food Bank Market is not just meeting people where they are but establishing a pathway for today’s shoppers to become tomorrow’s helpers.
