Food Bank for Larimer County

To keep up with the growing need for food assistance, the Food Bank for Larimer County intends to increase food distribution to 12.5 million meals annually by 2035.

Our dream is to provide not just good nutrition, but also health and hope to stabilize the lives of our clients and help them on a path to self-sufficiency.

To achieve the goal of distributing food for 12.2 million meals by 2035, the Food Bank has developed four primary strategies.

1. Increase services to under-served geographic areas identified by our service gap analysis.

2. Plan for population growth by increasing our capacity to source and distribute more food.

3. Increase service to seniors in order to meet the needs of this growing demographic group.

4. Expand participation in our Kids Cafe meal program during the summer months when children don't have access to free or reduced-price school meals.

Founded in 1984, the Food Bank for Larimer County has worked for more than three decades to provide food to all in need. The organization started in a small space furnished with a single card table before moving to a larger facility in 1987 and adding a Loveland location in 2006. Both of those facilities were later expanded (in 2001 and 2011, respectively). In 2018, the Food Bank purchased a third food distribution facility to keep up with a growing population and an increasing need for food assistance.

Today, the Food Bank for Larimer County is the only Feeding America clearinghouse for donated food in our area and serves as the County’s central hub for charitable food distribution. Our leadership team is experienced in food banking, fundraising, management, and warehouse operations. A private, nonprofit organization, the Food Bank serves more than 37,000 people and distributes enough food for more than 7.5 million meals annually through our programs and community partners.

To help close service gaps, we piloted a Mobile Pantry program in 2016 and have since added new locations to serve even more people. Evaluating those sites and finding new program partners is an ongoing process.

In May 2018, our service capacity expanded with the move to a larger distribution facility. This has given us the space to store and distribute more food, although rising food transportation costs (due to a national shortage of CDL drivers) continue to pose a significant challenge.

We partnered with Volunteers of America to provide scratch-cooked meals to seniors and continue to explore other options to serve our older neighbors.

Our Kids Cafe program piloted a new Food Truck during the summer of 2017. We are working on developing new partnerships and finding additional funds to provide summer meals to even more children in need.