CINCINNATI — Every Friday, dozens file into the parking lot outside an empty Kroger building in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood, lining up for bread, produce, meat, pre-cooked meals — anything that can help them feed their families for the week.
Despite ongoing donation deliveries and a fast-moving mass of clients, there’s an order to the chaos thanks to the commanding yet friendly presence of one volunteer, known to her neighbors as Ms. Sheila.
According to Gary Dangel, the food access coordinator for the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, the weekly Friday Food and Fun event started small. After the Kroger closed in 2017, the neighborhood became a food desert with little access to fresh, healthy food.
Dangel said he contacted the Freestore Foodbank’s Healthy Harvest Mobile Market to bring an affordable option to the neighborhood.
Every Friday Walnut Hills distributes food in the former Kroger parking lot
“It was a way to provide a lifeline for folks that didn’t have a car and were unable to get to the grocery store,” he said.
With the mobile market, locals could get double the produce for their SNAP dollars, and word spread quickly about the growing options. Then the pandemic hit and food insecurity in the neighborhood skyrocketed.
“We started doing food distribution for the schools,” Dangel said.
These meals and food boxes were free for families at Cincinnati Public Schools who could no longer rely on in-school meals during remote learning. After that distribution found a rhythm, Dangel said it started to combine with the mobile market and a food services hub began forming in the neighborhood.
“This really has grown over the past few years now,” he said. “La Soupe moved into the neighborhood during COVID and they started bringing casseroles and soup and then other organizations saw what we were doing and wanted to be part of it.”
That’s when Dangel met Ms. Sheila.
“I just overheard that they were serving something in a lot and so I just came to check it out,” she said.
Healthy Harvest Offers affordable produce
Ms. Sheila said she was looking for some help to make her food budget a little more affordable, but when she arrived early and saw the volunteers working to get things set up, she couldn’t just sit and watch.
“I said, ‘While I wait, I can help you,’” she said.
Dangel said she’s been back every week since, appointing herself the unofficial volunteer coordinator.
“And now when people come in they know to go over and ask Ms. Sheila what they need to do,” he said.
For Ms. Sheila, the service is an opportunity to give back for the blessings she said the neighborhood offers her while getting to know her community in a new light.
“I have really learnt a lot of lessons and the main thing is dealing with people,” she said.
She joked at times she feels like a complaints office, but she said the conversations she has with her neighbors help her improve their food distribution model and connect with donors about what the community needs.
“They do a great job. They really do,” she said.
Ms. Sheila sorts food and distributes bread to clients
It’s been nearly two years since Ms. Sheila started volunteering, and she said she has no plans to stop coming.
“We was out here when it was 18 degrees last week,” she said.
Dangel said he’ll keep the Friday Food and Fun event running as long as he can, though he said it will go through some changes over the next few months.
The former Kroger building is set to be demolished this year, to be replaced with a new mixed-retail and mixed-income housing unit.
Dangel said the food distribution was always meant to be a temporary solution until a comparable replacement to the Kroger comes to the neighborhood. Now, he said he plans to continue its operations near the construction site as long as it’s needed.
