Stephanie Sullivan, assistant director of marketing and communications for Food Bank of the Heartland, said the new location at 84th & L comes at an important time for the Omaha area.
“We have seen food insecurity increase nearly 50% over our service area just over the past two years,” Sullivan said.
The Food Bank of the Heartland serves emergency shelters, brick-and-mortar pantries, mobile pantries, nonprofit organizations, churches, schools – and of course they also serve people right from the warehouse via volunteer workers. The Food Bank has been serving the Omaha area since 1981 and now has the second largest service area across Feeding America’s 200 food banks, with a whopping 93 counties of coverage.
With such a large area of coverage, it was high time for the Food Bank to upgrade to a new building. The old location was able to hold about 50 volunteers, but the new location has the capacity of over double that, and now the Food Bank is able to hold a stunning 1.1 million more pounds of food ready for distribution inside their warehouse.
Additionally, fresh food is now more accessible. At the previous location, the Food Bank was “storing cold food in refrigerated trucks on our lot,” Sullivan said. “Now, with our new location, we are able to have cold storage under one roof.”
The new building also has an advantage in its high-traffic location.
“We knew that moving into this new facility, we’re on the seventh busiest intersection in Omaha,” Sullivan said. “What we came up with was care packs. It’s basically essential emergency food that can hold somebody over for a small period of time.”
All this supply demands an increase in helping hands.
“Volunteers are the backbone of our operations,” Sullivan said. “We could not deploy our mission without their support.”
“In fiscal year 2025, more than 53,000 hours were donated to the Food Bank,” she explained, “and that is the equivalent of more than 26 full-time employees.”
Service is needed now more than ever.
“Summer is really an important time, because typically we see food insecurity levels increase over the summer months,” Sullivan said. This is because students who are dependent on free and reduced lunch from schools no longer have this opportunity, and parents often have to feed them without the aid of government.
There are various jobs that volunteers can do, including sorting donated products, packaging fresh produce, repackaging donated products, and packing food packs for the new BackPack Program. This new program is an added advantage to the new location, so now people in need can stop inside the Food Bank to pick up a Care Pack, which includes essentials like protein bars and water bottles.
In giving just two hours of time, volunteers can make a difference in someone’s life and provide aid to those less fortunate.
“It sticks with you, knowing that you were able to make an impact in that small amount of time,” Sullivan said, “that somebody will have a meal maybe for dinner that night or for breakfast the next morning, because it’s a small impact you made.”
Morning and afternoon shifts at the Food Bank of the Heartland are offered Tuesday through Friday, and evening shifts are available Tuesdays. If interested, sign up at foodbankheartland.org.
