51 weeks a year, the St. Thomas' Food Pantry is open to provide emergency and supplemental food for our neighbors in need. Our doors have been open in this capacity since 1992.

Mission Statement:
The mission of the St. Thomas' Food Pantry is to address hunger, loneliness, and neglect in our city by providing our neighbors with nutritious food, positive social interactions, and resources to support health & wellbeing.

Who we serve:
Our guests come from all walks of life: people who are working full time and not making a living wage, those who are working and don’t have adequate or any health insurance, people who have part time or multiple jobs, those who are caring for their children, raising grandchildren, receiving benefits or even living in group homes. While circumstances might be different, all of our guests share the experience of food insecurity.

Stats:
Pre-COVID, we served around 75 households per week. Once COVID hit in 2020, we skyrocketed up to between 300 - 420 households per week. Our volunteer team grew by leaps and bounds to meet the need. We had 208 volunteers this past year with 90 of those volunteers being new to us. Each week we fill 85-100 shifts with volunteers.

In 2021 families received money through the Child Tax Credit which decreased childhood poverty by over 40% & decreased the need we saw by roughly 1/3.

Currently, we seeing more families than we did at the height of the pandemic. On October 23, 2025 we saw a record breaking 695 families and we have never run out of food.

Pre-covid 2019 stats:
Individuals served: 12,500

2023 stats:

Individuals served:  41,956

Pounds of food distributed:  568,824

Our partners include, but aren't limited to, Feed More, the USDA,  Food Lion, Walmart, Lidl, Montana Gold Bread Company, Shalom Farms, The Williams City Farm & Seasonal Roots. We also welcomed donations from Sous Casa, the VCU Ram Pantry,
Fed Ex of Ashland, St. Mark’s COGIC, Mutual Assurance, the Toucans of Westminster Canterbury, Cut the Clutter, Period Patch and many other groups & individuals.

We offered 4 four week “Healthy for Life” cooking classes this past year to people utilizing our food pantry to help improve quality of life, health, wellness & build community.