By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

One commonality between Bridgton Food Pantry and neighboring food distribution spots is: The amount of people using them is on the rise by as much as 20% more.

“We have new clients coming in every week,” according to Bridgton Food Pantry Executive Director Penni Robbins. “With the price of things going up — gas, food, we are going into the heating season — people are asking themselves, ‘Do I put food on the table or do I have heat?’ ”

The pantry’s fiscal year starts on July 1. Therefore, she could provide month-by-month comparisons for the most recent months. 

In August 2022, there were 603 families (or 1,188 people) who used the pantry, compared to August 2023 when a total of  907 families (or 1,739 people) supplemented their grocery bill with a food pantry visit.  Robbins pointed out that 2023 had five Tuesdays and 2022 had four Tuesdays during the month of August.

In September 2022, there were 580 families (or 1,330 people) who came to the pantry. In September 2023, that jumped to 771 families (or 1,271 people). Last October, 775 families (or 1,499 people) visited the food pantry. This year in October, with one Tuesday to go, there have been 947 families (or 1,140 individuals) who received food from the pantry.  It’s likely those number will increase by 200, she said.

“We are averaging about 200 families every week now,” Robbins said. 

When the BFP started out, 65 to 70 families used it, and it was a scramble to secure food for that many people back then, she said.

According to the 2020 census, Bridgton’s population is 5,418, Meanwhile, the population in neighboring Naples is 3,925 after the 2020 census; and Casco has a population of 3,646 as of three years ago.

Connie Madura is the executive director of the Naples Food Pantry, which operates out of the Naples United Methodist Church and is for Naples residents only. This pantry is open on Tuesday from 10 to 11:30 a.m. The pantry uses a drive-through method. People get to choose from a written menu, and food is delivered to their vehicle by a volunteer.

“The need is already greater. In the summer, we started getting family units. We have gone up 20 percent,” Madura said. “We are doing 20 percent more than a year ago. We were doing 32 families. It’s as many as 38 to 42 now. It fluctuates. If CrossWalks has it on Monday, a lot of our clients go over there instead. So we have fewer people here.”

“I have close to 60 families registered, but they don’t all come every week. About 35 to 40 families come every week,” she said.

The number of people “tends to increase toward the winter, probably because of the cost of fuel and heating oil. They [food pantry clients] are homeowners and renters. They have more expenses in the winter,” Madura said.

“We have some [people] who we haven’t seen for two years, and they have come back,” Madura said.

On Monday morning, Casco Food Pantry Director Joanne Vail was busy going through some cases of peanut butter that had been donated.

The Casco Village Church Food Pantry operates once a month, the fourth Thursday of the month, from 2 to 5 p.m.

“We are up a little bit this year. For October, we had 57 families. Last month, we did 52. We have numbers ranging from 42 to 57 families,” Vail said. “Last year, in 2022, our lowest month was in August with 34 families. Our highest was February with 46.”

“Comparing to October of last year, we had 40. This year, we have 57 families,” she said.  “We kind of contracted [got smaller] during Covid. It seems to be rebounding.”

That’s probably because many of the Casco clients are elderly, a segment of the at-risk population who curtailed going out in public during the pandemic, Vail said.

The Cross-Walk Community Outreach, which operates every other Monday out of the Naples Grange, did not contact The Bridgton News for this story. Therefore, those numbers are not included.

Sandy Swett oversees the Harrison Food Bank, which serves people in five towns.

“The need is crazy in the area. I am seeing homeless people in cars, living with kids. We have never seen that here. It is really disturbing,” she said.

“We are up to 700 families. We have more than 200 that we deliver to,” she said.

The number of people requiring that food be delivered has expanded from people who are homebound or immobile to families with broken down vehicles they cannot afford to fix, Swett said. 

“The need is really bad right now. We are seeing families [in which] they both work and they are still having to come to food pantry because they can’t make ends meet,” Swett said.