Refrigerated semi-trucks making their last stop on a rescue mission pulled up to docking stations on a late July morning at the Mid-Ohio Food Collective warehouse in Grove City.
The trucks carried hundreds of pounds of “rescued” food—everything from bananas and onions to frozen mashed potatoes. The excess food donated by retailers across Ohio shuttles through the three-football-field long warehouse, rushing to beat the next shipment.
These boxes are a fraction of the 84 million pounds of food the Mid-Ohio Food Collective distributed in 2024. The organization works with over 600 local food pantries to feed hungry Ohioans across the state.
Food bank demand has skyrocketed in recent years. As Ohio was still crawling out of a pandemic unemployment hole, Mid-Ohio and its partner agencies recorded just under 1 million service interactions in 2021. In 2024, that spiked to 1.84 million. The surge, combined with funding cuts, has left Mid-Ohio with fewer resources to serve more customers.
An employees transports produce at the Mid-Ohio Food Collective on July 29 in Grove City.
That trend is hitting food pantries across Ohio: higher demand, dwindling supply.
In early 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made cuts that stopped nearly 700,000 pounds of food planned to be delivered to Mid-Ohio. The canceled delivery was worth roughly $1.4 million, the Dispatch previously reported.
“It’s as though…you had something in your home kitchen, and you were going to have that for dinner this weekend and then a mouse gets into it and its gone,” said Mike Hochron, senior vice president of communications at Mid-Ohio. “All of a sudden there was stuff we were expecting to have on the shelves…and then it wasn’t.”
More cuts are on the horizon. Mid-Ohio says the recently adopted two-year state budget returned funding for food banks to pre-pandemic levels, reducing the agency’s buying power. The state spending plan provides $24.5 million a year for food banks, down about $7.5 million a year from a one-time increase in the prior budget.
Mid-Ohio Food Collective is seeing surging demand for food even as it is hit with budget cuts.
Still, the pantries that rely on Mid-Ohio to stock their shelves and feed their neighbors are seeing dramatic increases in patronage.
Olde Towne East food pantry grapples with rising demand
Broad Street Pantry, 760 E. Broad St. in Olde Towne East, is one of the many organizations that relied on food from Mid-Ohio. In 2022, it served an average of 46 families a day. So far in 2025, the daily average is 58 families.
Kathy Kelly-Long, the director of Broad Street, is having to rethink how she stocks the shelves. Before the cuts, most of the produce at Broad Street Pantry came from Mid-Ohio. Kelly-Long has now started relying more on local farmers for fresh produce.
However, unlike at Mid-Ohio, there is a price tag that comes with buying produce at fair market prices.
“We have a budget just like everybody else,” said Kelly-Long. “We want the most food, but we want the best food, and finding those balances is always tricky.”
Kelly-Long has been working at the pantry for 15 years, and she is starting to feel disheartened by the growing demand. She worries about having to do more fundraising in the future, and just how many people will come walking through the sliding doors at Broad Street.
“One of the things that is worrisome to us is that every month we are seeing 15% or more families who’ve never been to a pantry before,” said Kelly-Long. “It just means there are more and more people who can’t make their budget go where it needs to go.”
SNAP benefit cuts add stress
Budgets are potentially going to get even tighter in the future, because of changes to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, eligibility requirements. Legislation in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” increases the work requirements for able-bodied adults up to 64 years old. Kelly-Long and others involved with serving needy Ohioans are concerned that the paperwork associated with those work requirements, along with the expanded age range, could leave many Ohioans without SNAP dollars and more reliant on food pantry services.
Joshua LeLux and Penny Dunn have felt the sting of losing SNAP benefits. LeLux lost his benefits over a year ago because of unfilled work requirements, and his partner Dunn lost hers in March of 2025 because of a slowdown in the mail.
LeLux, 38, has dealt with mental health and substance abuse issues. This has made employment difficult for him despite being clean for two and a half years. Dunn, 51, uses a power scooter or a wheelchair that drastically limits her ability to access food pantry resources. Historically, the pair has relied on SNAP funding to provide most of their weekly meals, and the rest is covered by pantries like Broad Street.
“Without the SNAP benefits, I am going to have to visit more pantries,” said Dunn. “We have two weeks’ worth of food if we are lucky…that I bought while I had SNAP.”
Milo Grogan food pantry sees huge surge in food demand
For Dunn, whose mobility limits her access to food pantries, services like food delivery from NNEMAP, the Near Northside Emergency Material Assistance Program, have been crucial to her survival.
Roy Clark started working at NNEMAP, a food pantry located at 677 E. 11th Ave. in Milo Grogan, 16 years ago. Back then, the pantry averaged 40 people a day.
Now, in 2025, it sees an average of around 200 shoppers a day. Some get their food through in-person services, while others get deliveries. The pantry also offers new refrigerated lockers for food pick-ups.
The biggest increase the pantry saw was between 2021 and 2024, when it went from serving 19,000 people yearly to 56,000.
The organization, like many in central Ohio, relies on Mid-Ohio for produce. In the past, NNEMAP received 13 pallets of fruits and vegetables a week from the regional food bank.
Now it gets 10.
Volunteers sort through produce at the Mid-Ohio Food Collective on July 29 in Grove City.
Because of this, Clark, the executive director, is having to rethink NNEMAP’s spending.
“We are going to spend less money on shelf-stable things like canned fruits and vegetables. Because we are hoping to be able to use some of those dollars to bring in produce from local distributors,” said Clark. “[They] are great but more expensive.”
Clark doesn’t mince words. He is worried. But smart budgeting, a loyal base of volunteers, and grass roots funding gives him hope.
“It is a difficult environment we are in… There is an assumption that…we will see more people and the amount of food coming to us from food banks will be less,” said Clark. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that is a problem.”
Mark Bruce, a corporate affairs manager with Kroger, talks about food donations at the Mid-Ohio Food Collective in Grove City.
Reporter Sarah Sollinger can be reached at ssollinger@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Need grows as Columbus food pantries face dwindling supply