Cold comfort: New cooler, freezer help Palatine food pantry fight food insecurity

This story has been updated with the correct spelling of the pantry director’s name.

A Palatine food pantry has enhanced its ability to provide fresh, perishable items through a $315,100 Endeavor Health Community Investment Fund grant.

A new walk-in cooler and freezer at Faith Feeds Food Pantry, 1585 N. Rand Road, addresses critical storage needs for those goods.

Faith Feeds is a nonprofit organization that operates out of the Community Resource Center near Rand and Dundee roads. It is open Thursdays from 4-6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon.

Endeavor owns the building and works with the nonprofit Partners for Our Communities.

“Food insecurity across all of the hospitals in our system is one of our key priority areas,” said Karen Baker, Endeavor’s Director for Community Impact and Engagement. “So this was a perfect example of a way we could work together to address food insecurity, by giving Faith Feeds the grant to purchase these two units.”

The renovation will allow Faith Feeds to expand access to perishable, nutritious foods to the more than 45,000 neighbors it serves each year. In addition, it will continue its partnership with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to deliver more than 464,000 pounds of fresh food each year.

Before receiving the additional cold storage, the pantry would get deliveries. But it wasn’t able to house fresh items like milk, eggs and dairy.

Pantry director Adrienne Bolbot said the expansion will serve a growing demand. The pantry increasingly serves working people in their 30s and 40s struggling with costs or retirees on fixed incomes.

A mobile unit from the pantry visits low-income apartment complexes five times monthly.

Volunteers like Ann Duffey of Wheeling are pleased with the addition — the pantry benefits from 1,400 volunteer hours per month.

“We actually could use even more room,” she said, “but it's beautiful.”