Food pantry to open in Sugar Grove

Melisa Taylor is marveling this week at the generosity of Sugar Grove-area residents.

They've filled the shelves, refrigerator and freezer at the new Between Friends Food Pantry, which was to open Thursday night.

"I cannot believe how generous people are; they are coming out of the woodwork," said Taylor, who has been organizing the project that started last fall when her daughters and their friends went door-to-door to collect food for the Elburn Food Pantry.

They decided that Sugar Grove should have its own, to take some of the burden off the Elburn outfit.

"They are really getting pounded," Taylor said.

The new pantry will serve residents of the Kaneland school district, and the Prestbury subdivision. It will be open from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays.

Participants can register at 5 p.m., and food will be handed out starting 30 minutes later. Senior citizens and people with disabilities will get first chance at the food, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Patrons must provide proof of residency, such as a current utility bill, mortgage statement or lease, plus a driver's license or state identification card. They are also asked to show a birth certificate for each dependent child.

The pantry is using about 1,000 square feet donated by Engineering Enterprises Inc., at 52 Wheeler St. A refrigerator and a chest freezer were donated, as was the shelving. The shelves were full Wednesday night.

"It cracks me up. Everybody just migrates to canned green beans," Taylor said of the donations. "But not a lot of carrots. And we have lots of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce."

At first, the only paper product she had was a four-roll pack of toilet paper. That got her thinking: paper goods and personal-hygiene products, such as diapers and baby wipes, can't be purchased with the Illinois LINK food benefits. So she started asking people to donate those kinds of items.

"If you can't eat it, we need it," she said. And so the pantry also has those, plus shampoos and soaps. "It smells really good in here," she said.

If people want to donate money, they can send checks to P.O. Box 509, Sugar Grove, IL 60554. The pantry will use it to buy food, at a discounted rate, from the Northern Illinois Food Bank.

A Web site design class at Waubonsee Community College is building a Web site for the pantry, sugargrovefoodpantry.org.

And door-to-door food collections are planned Nov. 15 and 22.

Taylor said she's experienced "some really cool weirdness" as far as people helping the effort. She needed a special battery for the pantry's exit sign light, but couldn't find one at a hardware store. As she was leaving, a guy in the parking lot saw her carrying the old battery, approached her, and offered a new one. Turned out he worked for a firm that installs such lights. He didn't even know she was getting it for the food pantry. "Just consider it a kindness," he told her.