West Aurora staff, teachers collect food for Aurora Holiday Food Drive
As the end of the work week, Fridays can sometimes be an easier day.
But not during the Aurora Holiday Food Drive.
Brian Romero, a driver for the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry, was getting ready for his second round of food pickups on Friday, and it wasn’t even quite 10 a.m.
“Fridays are not usually busy,” he said after loading pallets onto a truck set to go pick up more food. “Not today. But that’s good. The holidays are coming up and people need food.”
That’s the point of the Holiday Food Drive, as the 19th annual drive pulls into its second week. It began Nov. 1 and runs through the day before Thanksgiving ― this year Nov. 25. It is designed not only to help at holiday time, but to help stock the shelves at the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry for the coming year.
In the year from August 2025 through July 2026, the pantry served 23,041 individuals representing 6,957 households. Some 2,489 of those households were first-timers, or about 36% of households served.
The pantry served more than 3 million pounds of food during that time, serving a population largely in Kane and Kendall counties, about 86% of the clients.
On this Friday, Romero was taking the truck to three West Aurora schools ― Jewel Middle School, Greenman Elementary School and West Aurora High School ― to pick up food collected by teachers and staff in the district.
The food was collected through the efforts of members of the Aurora Education Association ― West, the West Aurora Office Professionals Association, the West Aurora Paraprofessional Association and the A+ Foundation. The organizations worked through each West Aurora school building, with people at each building collecting a designated kind of food that can be put together into a Thanksgiving meal.
Coming up, members of the organizations will meet at the pantry to sort the food and put it into meal boxes that will be delivered with a turkey for Thanksgiving.
The goal was to collect food for more than 200 kits, and judging by the more than five pallets of food that packed the truck, the members more than made the goal.
“Our community …” said Laura Beatus, who recently retired after 34 years as a teacher in the West Aurora School District and now works with the A+ Foundation. “Ask and they show up.”
Beatus and Ingrid Roney, executive director of the A+ Foundation, said that in benefiting the community, the collected food benefits a number of the very students the teachers and staff members interact with daily. There are 12,000 students, and therefore their families, in the West Aurora district.
“Our district understands our community, and this is part of it,” Roney said.
Romero helped load the food onto pallets into the truck, and then wrapped it up to make it easier to unload and move around once at the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry on Jericho Road.
The senior at Northern Illinois University, who grew up on Aurora’s East Side, has been working at the pantry since June. With the food drive in full swing, he is picking up food five days a week, even on holidays.
As in past years, the food drive is centered around three Aurora grocery stores: Prisco’s Family Market, 1108 Prairie St., Aurora; Cermak Fresh Market, 1250 N. Lake St., Aurora; and Food Market La Chiquita, 1525 Douglas Road, Montgomery. Shoppers simply purchase a packaged bag of food and leave it at the store for donation to the pantry. Supporters can also fill a virtual bag with an online donation at AuroraFoodPantry.org/holidayfooddrive.
Sponsors for the Aurora Holiday Food Drive are: La Chiquita Food Mart; Prisco’s Family Market; Cermak Fresh Food Market; Aurora FastPrint; Old National Bancorp; Dolan & Murphy, Inc.; Factor; Konen Insurance; Aurora Bank & Trust; Gerald Subaru of North Aurora; Cyrus One; Mendel Plumbing, Heating & Electric; Bob’s Discount Furniture Charitable Foundation Inc.; Rush Copley Medical Center; Accurate Color & Compounding; and Jake’s, Inc.
Steve Lord is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.