Inside the lower floor of a Florence office building, boxes and crates of food line the walls. Dozens of cars start pulling into the small parking lot out front. It’s the last Friday of May — and a Northern Kentucky cultural food pantry is about to open its doors.
A cultural food pantry offers food options that are intentionally aligned with cultural meals and nutrition. For Hispanic families in the region, this local cultural food pantry is also an opportunity to speak their language, share stories and see old friends.
“The fruits, vegetables and meats are things that for us — our food — is appropriate for our nourishment and culture,” said Blanca Perez, in an interview translated from Spanish. “But we start becoming friends and grow a lot of love for each other.”
This cultural food pantry is run by FIESTA; which stands for Families, Inclusion, Education, Society, Tradition and Access. The nonprofit focuses on family-oriented resource aid, which includes the larger pantry day every last Friday of the month.
Many carpool with neighbors, cousins, brothers and sisters, or coworkers. Some parents send their children with a neighbor if they are working during the pantry’s open hours.
Perez carpooled with her sister. They said while the food they receive here may not be much long-term, it helps them cut costs. Both send whatever money they can to their family in Venezuela, where political unrest has worsened living conditions.
“I’ve always seen this as a help for my family that’s over there,” Perez said. “Even if it’s not directly for them, the money we save from this helps us to help them.”
Stocking a cultural food pantry
On the last day of April this year, FIESTA’s pantry room shelves held just a few cans of garbanzo beans and corn, along with uncooked rice and beans.
A supplier pulls up outside FIESTA’s office, rolling out fresh produce and bread. They also offer FIESTA founder Theresa Cruz boxes of raw, frozen cinnamon roll dough with no labels or instructions. This is the type of food she turns away.
“We give out stuff that families are really going to recognize and know how to cook,” Cruz said.
With the limited space in the pantry, Cruz said she’s had to become much stricter and mindful of what she accepts — especially if families are not used to cooking and eating certain meals.
“I’ve had peanut butter and jelly here,” Cruz said. “They don’t want it.”
While there are base ingredients, like spaghetti and bread, that are shared among cuisines, Cruz makes sure to pair it with beans and lentils so families can make the meals they grew up with.
FIESTA is part of the Freestore Foodbank system — an emergency food service organization that serves Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Through their services, FIESTA gets free donations from participating stores in the area.
After the supplier unloads the food donations, volunteers set out the bread, apples and bananas they just received on a plastic table in their office. For items like these received throughout the month, they can’t wait until the next distribution day to give them out.
“We’ll send a message and say ‘hey we’ve got bread, come and get it,’” Cruz said.
‘Ayuda bastante’ (It’s a big help.)
On the last Friday of May, more than 200 families lined up outside of FIESTA throughout the evening — mostly Hispanic families, but a few come from African countries or are white Americans.
“We close the [registration form] once we have 210 families registered,” said Griselda Castrellon, FIESTA’s community resource specialist. “But based on that, we still take ten more families.”
Families get one pre-packed reusable cooler per household — and they have to reserve a time-slot with their information beforehand. Coolers get returned before the next pantry day, and the operation keeps running.
Inside the pantry, volunteers were running behind packing the reusable coolers due to the unusually high amount of donations they received that morning. Salsa music blasted through a speaker to keep a steady packing flow going.
“This is the most donations we’ve gotten in months,” Cruz said to the room, a line of food pantry clients waiting behind her.
This month, they received dozens of boxes of each produce, meat and dry food donations from Kroger, Target, Publix, and other food banks with leftover donations. While not all the produce is the freshest, and any frozen meats are about to pass their optimal shelf life, the food is still good to eat.
“We do appreciate it greatly, and we like it,” Perez said. “And it’s a big help.”
It’s appreciated by the pantry’s clients, who are trying to make ends meet both in Northern Kentucky and for family members back home.
At the distribution day, Jesusita Gutierrez says she sends money to her children in Mexico. She didn’t see them grow up, and her youngest daughter is now 24 years old.
“We talk,” Gutierrez said in Spanish. “I always tell them how I miss them, and they also miss me. But in exchange for me not being there, they never went hungry.”
Anabel Flores carpooled with Gutierrez. Her kids are also in Mexico — her mother took care of raising them. Her mother passed three years ago, and Flores hadn’t seen her in 17 years when she did.
“I know money doesn’t buy time,” Flores said in Spanish. “But at least I have the satisfaction of giving my kids what I didn’t have growing up.”
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