Vineyard Church food pantry sees usage rise as in-person visits open up

By Scott Koslow

Vineyard Church partners with Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center (EMBARC) to offer a weekly food pantry to the community. Photos by Scott Koslow

Outside Vineyard Church in Des Moines, a line of families forms for the Wednesday food pantry—a new initiative launched in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic hosted by Vineyard Church, in financial partnership with Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center (EMBARC).

Beginning in April 2020, the church could not welcome community members inside to pick up supplies. Instead, families picked up pre-assembled bags of food and USDA produce.

In July 2021, Vineyard transitioned to in-person pantries where community members could come in and select the resources they needed. Community pantries are held the first Wednesday of every month from 4 to 6 p.m. at Vineyard Church, 2332 Euclid Ave, Des Moines, IA 50310.

Over the past year, Vineyard Church’s pantry saw amazing success. So many people attended the pantry, they couldn’t keep up with demand, volunteers said.

Volunteers at Vineyard Church’s Community Pantry: Kelly McCully, Judy Applegate and Becky Waugaman.

“Last fall and winter we were actually limiting it to 105 families,” said Judy Applegate, a regular volunteer at the Vineyard Church pantry.

In July, for Vineyard’s first in-person pantry since COVID-19 began, 124 households attended. In August, 110 households attended, totaling 562 people served.

“We have a line going down the street, starting today at 3:30,” a half hour before the pantry even opened, Applegate explained.

Traditional food pantries often fail to meet the needs of refugee and ethnically diverse communities. Vineyard Church’s pantry predominantly serves immigrants from Burma. Some common foods like brown rice or peanut butter were not used by those community members. Other items that the immigrants wanted may have been missing.

“I’ve helped at other pantries […] We discovered that a lot of the staples that we get from the food bank weren’t really things that they liked,” Applegate explained.

In-person visits for the food pantry began in July.

Social-distance safety measures during COVID-19 exacerbated the problem. Church volunteers and staff members assembled takeaway packages for pantry visitors, which kept clients safe but meant that families could not choose what items they needed for their home.

Once Vineyard Church transitioned to in-person pantry visits, families could select exactly what they wanted.

“Now we’re able to let them come in and actually choose what they want. So if they don’t like tuna, they don’t get two cans of tuna in their bag,” Applegate said.

The pantry recently increased the amount of rice and cooking oil offered—two items that proved extremely popular with clients. Vineyard also added household and hygiene products like toilet paper, toothpaste and dishwasher soap. Next month, organizers hope to offer a range of fresh produce. Every item added gives more choices to everyone served, and helps families served by the pantry to meet their own needs.

This personal choice makes a huge impact for the volunteers and the community members.

“It really feels good to offer them things that we think they like better and that they can choose. That’s big. We don’t just hand them something and say ‘this is what we have, we assume you’ll use it,’” she added.

For the volunteers and staff at Vineyard Church, community pantries are an opportunity to help others.

“It really is a joy just to see them walk through and walk out with a couple bags of items that they can use,” Applegate said.