Cultivate Food Rescue plans to break ground next month on a new cold storage facility it thinks will help it collect about 10 times as much food over seven to 10 years.
The nonprofit in October launched a $10 million fund-raising campaign, kickstarted by a $500,000 American Rescue Plan grant from St. Joseph County. By the end of this month, Cultivate could have up to $9 million in commitments gathered, says Jim Conklin, executive director and co-founder.
Once finished next spring, the 22,000-square-foot facility will hold about 80 semi-trucks of food. Two-thirds will be freezer space and one-third will be refrigeration.
Having much more cold storage space will let Cultivate increase the amount of grocery stores it receives unused food from, and it will be a big help to area food pantries, Conklin said.
“One of the things our community pantries really lack is cold storage space,” Conklin said. “They lack space period but all of them don’t have enough cold storage space. We thought instead of just adding commercial refrigerators and freezers to every community pantry, we’ll just put a big one here and make space available to them. Because sometimes they’ll get a large donation of food that they can’t receive and accept.”