OXFORD, Ohio — Three times a week the second building on the Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services campus is bustling with volunteers and staff grabbing cans of fruit, beans, vegetables, and boxes of rice and pasta.
It should be two weeks' worth of food for families who need it all packed into a few bags, then from there, the volunteers fill up their trunks and set out to deliver.
The Talawanda School District covers more ground than any other school district in Ohio, and TOPSS is the only pantry to serve its hundreds of families in need, many of which don’t have reliable transportation to make it out to the pantry in person. As a new project manager for the pantry, Ross Olson is in charge of making sure they are able to get what they need.
“I’d say, on average, we’d have anywhere from 10 to 20 household deliveries,” he said.
The pantry itself is on the edge of Oxford but Olson said much of its deliveries are out in rural communities and volunteers are the ones making the trips. Now he hopes a new investment, a mobile pantry, will not only make deliveries more efficient but expand what TOPSS can do.
“I think we would be looking to serve about 80 to 100 additional families,” he said.
TOPSS has been working to get the van for two years, eventually securing $96,000 in CARES Act funds to make it a reality early this year. Then after months of planning and customization, Olson finally got the chance to step behind the wheel for the first time.
“Here we have the front refrigerated part of the van,” he said showing off the vehicle. “It runs off of the engine power of the vehicle but it also has a sure power electrical plug.”
The vehicle is made to keep items fresh and frozen for hours during pickups and deliveries for the pantry but Olson said the most important thing the mobile pantry will provide is the opportunity to take all of the pantry services to the people who need it most.
“We recently moved over the last year and people don’t necessarily know that we’ve relocated,” he said.
Many of their former clients lived close to that former location by the Parkview apartments and have been unable to make the trip across town to get the food they need. Olson said that’s where they plan to set up the mobile pantry first, hoping to park the vehicle by that former location once a week starting mid-July.
“People will essentially just walk up to it just like a grocery store and select their items off the shelves,” he said.
Olson said there are a few more adjustments the van needs to make that a reality, including shelving and additional refrigeration tools but for the most part, the vehicle arrived ready for a quick rollout.
The van has been customized with a retractable awning to turn itself into a stand and the back has a built-in ramp to help carry carts of food on and off. Olson said it takes mere minutes to set up and will be unmistakable to anyone passing by.
“Which is what we want to do,” he said. “It’s important to us that we can go to people in need and provide them with food and this vehicle is designed to allow us to do that.”
For now, the mobile pantry is in service with the Oxford Farmers Market, which partners with TOPSS, but eventually, the pantry hopes to get its mobile unit out to six locations around the Talawanda School District.