Boxes of fresh produce, squash, potatoes, peppers and other items filled the floor and stacks of crates volunteers quickly unpacked and sorted them.
“It’s like a beehive in here, if we stand in one place too long, we’ll get run over,” Leigh Zydonik, executive director of the Foothills Food Bank, joked, as volunteers sorted and packed boxes for transportation around the region.
The Cave Creek-based food bank serves about 200 square miles in the northern reaches of Phoenix, northern Maricopa County and southern Yavapai County. Its region reaches Mayer to the north, Rio Verde to the east, Interstate 17 to the west, and Loop 101 to the south.
Now, it operates out of a converted single-family home. But it will move into a new building to expand its food distribution capacity early next year.
The food bank is leasing three acres of land from the town of Cave Creek, and the new building will also include some office space for the town’s use, Zydonik said. The new, 15,000-square-foot building will triple the organization’s capacity for space for food sorting, packing and distribution and will have a test kitchen, conference space, a client choice pantry and increased refrigeration and food storage space.
Construction on the site is expected to be finished by the end of the year, and the food bank will move to the new site in January and open there in February, Zydonik said.
The additional space will also provide room to have meetings with people who come to the food bank, to learn about their individual circumstances and connect them with other resources like rent assistance, transportation, health services and other areas that could help.
“Very rarely is someone food insecure and yet everything else is going great,” Zydonik said. “Our goal is to look at the root cause.”
The food bank’s main headquarters has been based in the converted single-family home for about 10 years, and the space has already been expanded once, Zydonik said. The space includes areas for offices, sorting and packing food, and a pantry where clients can come through and “shop” for the food they want, letting them decide what to get.
But configuration has also left the food bank confined on space, with few areas for people to walk, and limiting the amount of food that can be stored.
About three years ago, the organization hired an architect to evaluate the space and see what could be done to improve it, she said. But the realities of being located in a single-family residential area with very little available parking and few options for entrances made any modifications very difficult.
“It was kind of a safety nightmare,” Zydonik said.
The food bank looked for other sites that could accommodate a new development but didn’t have any luck finding something that would work. Then, Zydonik said, she approached the town leadership and asked what they should do. The town owns land on Carefree Highway and 41st Street, including the 3 acres that will be leased to the food bank.
Funding for the new facility came mostly from donations and grants, including estate donations and a grant from the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. In total, the food bank was seeking to raise $6.5 million to fund the development.
Most of the food that the food bank distributes comes from the grocery rescue program. Participating stores give food items that are nearing expiration to the food bank to distribute to those who need it.
Foothills Food Bank gets food from more than 30 stores in the area, including fresh produce and shelf-stable food. The food bank has about 325 active volunteers and 11 paid staff members.
It made sense, she said, to keep the food bank near its current location, where the volunteers and stores that supply the food are, and distribute the food to where it’s needed, instead of moving the food bank.
About 14% of people who live in the food bank’s service area are food insecure, including people who live in affluent areas like Cave Creek, she said.
“The need in the Cave Creek and Carefree area is very hidden,” Zydonik said. Many of the people who live in the area who come to the food bank are elderly, and some have depleted their savings and remain on fixed incomes, she said.
“There is a lot of need for seniors, and there are some working poor in this area,” she said.
In addition to the Cave Creek location, the food bank also has pantries in New River and Black Canyon City, as well as mobile pantries and mini pantries across the service area. In 2023, the food bank collected 1.83 million pounds of food, which provided about 788,000 meals to people in the service area.
Zydonik said the facility’s expanded capacity won’t expand the service area, but instead will let the food bank go deeper into the community and reach more people within the region.
Reach the reporter atcvanek@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter@CorinaVanek.