North Side food pantry becomes first in city to offer online orders for pickup

Patrons of one North Side food pantry will now be able to fill out grocery orders from their phones or computers and pick them up without waiting.

Lakeview Pantry is the first food pantry in Chicago to offer the service. Pantry operators hope the new option will allow them to reach more people.

"Based on census data, we know there are about 140,000 people who qualify for our services on the North Side, but we're only serving about 9,000 of those," the pantry's director of development, Ashley Friend, said at a news conference Thursday.

"A big reason people don't come is a lack of time - it can take two hours of standing in line," she said of the traditional food pickups.

"But also there's a dignity factor. People don't want to have to come to a food pantry, so we built this really to serve those people, those working families."

In order to qualify for the pantry's food program, clients have to be 185% below the poverty line, Friend said.

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