Flathead Food Bank to Launch Hungry Horse Location

The Flathead Food Bank has long made efforts to reach people in the Canyon on the way to Glacier National Park. For decades, it has hosted a mobile food pantry stop in Martin City once per week, a service Kelli Worley, the major gifts officer, described as critical for the area. She said it is considered a food desert for the lack of grocery stores.

Starting in November, the Flathead Food Bank will further scale up its presence in the Canyon, opening a physical location in Hungry Horse. Worley will act as the coordinator for the new spot, a project she described as a passion for her. The Flathead Food Bank’s Hungry Horse location will be hosted in two outbuildings behind Canyon Elementary School.

“A couple Saturdays ago, they had their annual Harvest Fest, and so I was able to go out there and table and spread the good word about the food bank and got a lot of positive feedback from the community,” Worley said. “Some folks were wanting to know how they can donate towards it. Some are really excited that they’ll be able to utilize our services. So, it’s a bit of a mixture, but definitely everything was very positive about us coming out there.”

The project, which has long been in the works, will open for the first time to Canyon residents on Nov. 3. Worley said for now, visitors can access the Hungry Horse food bank location every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. She added there are no plans to discontinue the mobile food pantry stop that takes place in Martin City. The new location will add to the current services the food bank offers.  

Chris Sidmore, the executive director of the Flathead Food Bank, previously told the Beacon the new location was made possible thanks to donations the nonprofit has received through programs such as its Feed the Need benefit concerts.

Worley said donors helped cover the lease and the necessary equipment to get started in Hungry Horse. Still, she said as the new spot gets up and running, needs remain in order for the location to offer the fullest breadth of services possible.

Worley anticipates increasing the food bank’s presence could result in an increase to the nonprofit’s food budget. And, she added, it’s always looking for donations and volunteers.

But the highest need in Hungry Horse is refrigerators and freezers.

Worley said the organization has coordinated with Canyon Foods about food rescue, where the food bank receives items the store no longer stocks on its shelves, but that aren’t spoiled. Without a place to store it, however, the food bank can’t carry all of those items yet. Without refrigerators and freezers, Worley said current offerings will mostly be dry goods.

Nonetheless, Worley remains hopeful the food bank will continue to expand its offerings in Hungry Horse as the new location gets off the ground. Eventually, the vision is for the Hungry Horse location to emulate the model used at the Flathead Food Bank’s main campus in Kalispell, where clients can come and shop for a wide variety of items for themselves and their families.

“You know, it’s really exciting to have something a little more sustainable out there,” Worley said. “Again, [in Kalispell], you know, people can typically come once a week out here. And so, to be able to have the same resources out in a community to where, traveling is challenging, especially in the wintertime, [and] there’s not as many resources out there either.”

She continued: “It’s just gonna be exciting to kind of see how it grows and how the community takes to it, and then hopefully we can even replicate that in our other rural community. We go to Marion, and there’s no grocery store out there in Kila or Marion. And so, the hope is that this is something that we can continue to do and to grow so that the communities don’t need to travel in so far and so we can meet them where they’re at.”  

[email protected]