Cub Scouts lend helping hand to Lansing Food Pantry

Earlier this month, Lansing Cub Scout Pack 48 held a food drive to support the Lansing Food Pantry, and on Dec. 4, the pantry received nearly 1,400 pounds of food. The donation goes a long way to help those in need, as Pantry Coordinator Toni Adams can attest.

This is the second year in a row the Cub Scouts — under Scout Leader Steve Patrician — have held a food drive for the pantry. In 2020, they collected over 300 pounds of food, but this year, thanks to new methods and plenty of enthusiasm from scouts, they collected 1,391.5 pounds.

“They went to Target, bought the Target bags,” Adams said. “They made up this little … tag that went on it and it said, ‘The Cub Scout Troop 48 would like your assistance to donate to the food pantry. We’ll pick it up on such and such a day.’ They went through their neighborhoods and just put it on your doorstep. And so, if you wanted to [donate], you did, and you left it on your doorstep, and they came and picked it up on whatever that given date was. So, that worked great — 1,391 pounds!”

Adams said that it was a delight to work with the Cub Scouts again.

“These guys were just so organized,” she said. “And I literally didn’t have to do anything. They had it all done, brought it all in, put it on the shelves. We took pictures. We ate donuts and cider and such. … It was hilarious to see them because these bags were brought in by adults out of the trunks of their car. So, when we set it up on the carts, the kids were like, ‘Wow!’ It’s so impactful. And they just were super excited.”

In fact, it was such a rewarding experience for all involved that Patrician offered to hold more food drives for the pantry in the future, like two or three times a year.

This year’s donation was a big boost to the pantry, which regularly provides Lansing families with much-needed food items.

“You wouldn’t think that Lansing would have as many needy people as [we] do, but we do,” Adams said.

The food at the pantry comes from a wide variety of sources, including resident donations, purchases through the Food Bank of the Southern Tier and donations from businesses such as the Lansing Market. Buying through the Food Bank of the Southern Tier allows the Lansing Food Pantry to get food supplies far cheaper than grocery store prices, often pennies on the dollar. And the Lansing Market regularly calls the pantry to see what supplies are needed, packing those supplies into paper bags that customers can then purchase for donation.

Thanks to that community support and cooperation, the Lansing Food Pantry has weathered the pandemic considerably well, though there has been some decrease in volunteers.

“At one time, we had 30 volunteers, and then of course, COVID hit,” Adams said. “We were deemed an essential business, so we stayed open. But we lost the majority of our volunteers, and we have a core of 10 right now that have been with us forever.”

The format of the pantry also looks very different now than it did before the pandemic. Prior to March of 2020, residents would come up to the pantry’s door, take a shopping cart and go around the pantry’s U-shaped aisle as volunteers handed them a certain number of items based on how many people are in that person’s family. But things changed when the pandemic hit, and the new model is here to stay.

“We couldn’t let people in,” Adams said. “So, we had to go to a drive-thru mode. And we’ve been doing it ever since March of [2020]. And we won’t go back to anything different. It’s just so much more efficient. A lot of our clients are elderly, so they can stay right in their car. They don’t have to get up and get in here and try to walk around, that kind of thing. It takes us about five and a half minutes to fill an order.”

Adams said that, all through the pandemic, the dedication from the pantry’s core volunteers hasn’t wavered. Adams joined the pantry a few years ago after retiring from a nearly four-decade-long career at Cargill in Lansing, and many of her fellow volunteers come from a similar background.

“Four of them I had worked with at Cargill,” Adams said. “[They] had just recently retired also. So, it was just kind of nice. The people were great. We got along great. It was kind of a social thing, too, for some of us. We have this one volunteer that every time she comes in, she brings jokes, and everybody stops what they’re doing, and she tells the jokes. They’re stupid little jokes. But that’s just the kind of group [we have].”

Going forward, Adams said the pantry plans to keep up with its efforts through whatever the pandemic throws its way. In the long term, volunteers are hoping to expand the pantry’s space, as the current space is often cramped from food supplies for both the pantry and the Lansing Lunchbox, which stores its food for Lansing students at the pantry.

For more information about the Lansing Food Pantry, visit the pantry at 1767 E. Shore Dr. The entrance is located next to The Field.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com.