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An early November pause on federal food assistance left many in Cambridge turning to food pantries in the weeks before Thanksgiving. As one of the busiest seasons for the nonprofits approached, leaders braced for impact.
Three of the city’s largest food pantries — the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee, Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, and East End House — served more than 2,000 households this year. In anticipation of a rise in demand, the nonprofits ramped up food collection and pivoted delivery strategies.
The Margaret Fuller House hosted a block party instead of having residents line up for meals in an attempt to mitigate wait times, serving roughly 600 households this year. Advance registration was required, and people were assigned time slots to pick up meals.
“The lines were still long, but instead of having 500 people staying in line at once, we might have had maybe 90 people based on the assigned hour for them, and so that makes it a lot easier,” Selvin L. Chambers III, CEO of the Margaret Fuller House, said.
Chambers also noted that advance registration, which the Margaret Fuller House has done for Thanksgiving for several years, allows local food pantries to ensure their supply matches demand.
Food pantries in Cambridge receive weekly allocations from the Greater Boston Food Bank — a regional center that distributes to food pantries in 190 cities. Ahead of high-demand holidays, most begin to set aside stock to prepare for the holidays in September.
The city’s food pantries have been strained to meet the increase in demand for months as more than 10,000 Cambridge residents have faced uncertainty over access to benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Ryan Montbleau, community programs director of the East End House, said that their food pantry began stockpiling for the holidays in late September, just when a federal government shutdown put SNAP benefits in jeopardy.
“So over the course of about a month and a half, we built up our stock supply for Thanksgiving,” Montbleau said, “which was not very easy this year, because our food pantry itself, weekly, has been demanding so many resources.”
“It was challenging to balance those two needs,” he added.
As the number of residents relying on food pantries continued to rise throughout October and November, the nonprofits were faced with another issue: limited storage.
“It’s a perfect storm of needing the refrigerator and freezer space that we have to store up for the Thanksgiving distribution and then also juggling that with the immediate needs of the day-to-day,” Alicia McCabe, director of strategic programs and operations at the Margaret Fuller House, said in an early November interview.
Rachel Plummer, associate director of the CEOC, similarly said their demand has continued to increase “week after week” since October.
“It’s hard to compare to previous years, because outside of it being the holiday, the need has just been increasing so dramatically in the past couple of months,” Plummer said.
The CEOC food pantry served 304 households for Thanksgiving this year — a jump from the roughly 200 served last year.
A group of local chefs also pooled their efforts to aid the nonprofits, preparing and donating 50 meals to the East End House.
William Gilson, owner of First Street Market, said that reading the news about threats to SNAP sparked conversations among local chefs and encouraged them to help this year.
“We just wanted to feel like we were doing something,” Gilson said.
—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.
