“Bringing Healthy Food and Hope to Central Texans” reads the side of the Food Bank’s new 18-wheeler. The new truck will take nutritious food to families at eight new sites in Central Texas. On June 1, the Mobile Food Pantry truck made its first distribution at Copperas Cove in Coryell County.
The truck will serve families in various locations in Coryell, Milam, Travis, Hays and Williamson Counties. Each of the sites will help low-income families with a food insecurity rate of 20 percent or higher, many of which have low access to vehicles and live more than 20 miles away from a grocery store in a rural setting or more than one mile away in an urban setting.
Though the news about the new Mobile Food Pantry sites is spreading slowly, there are families already waiting in line by the time the truck pulls in to the parking lot at a new location. The extra food will help them get through the month and stay healthy.
Tressa is one of the individuals patiently waiting in line at the Bread for All Food Pantry. The site is right around the corner from her apartment complex and only a short walk away.
She is diabetic and needs to maintain a strict diet, but she can’t afford to buy fresh produce to keep a healthy diet with the less than $200 a month she has to spend on food.
“I am insulin dependent and I have to be really careful about what I eat,” Tressa said. “It is because the foods that I need are so expensive. Things have just gotten so expensive. That’s why these Central Texas Food Bank pantries are so important to us. We need that little extra boost.”
With the new truck, the Food Bank has also been able to implement four new Fresh Food for Families distributions using our Mobile Food Pantry model. At these sites, only fresh produce is distributed.
Since the new route distributions began, the Food Bank has served an additional 1,616 individuals and distributed more than 44,000 pounds of healthy food to these high-need areas.
The truck is only one of three new ones the Food Bank will acquire thanks to the Moody Foundation.
“I’m very grateful to the donors that are doing this, because without the donors, we wouldn’t be able to have the extra food that we need,” Tressa said. “I’m very grateful to the donors.”
