OUR FACILITIES

Our recently built, AIB certified, clean-energy efficient facility, was built to suit the unique needs of a modem food bank—a space to erase hunger and encourage healthy eating habits. We now serve over 1 in 4 residents and 1 in 3 children in Monterey County.

The building is 50,000 sq. ft of storage space with 30,000 sq ft of cold storage and 5,000 sq ft of freezer space and it includes six loading docks. With 480 solar panels, energy-saving fixtures, and a custom warehouse setup, our facility provides the foundation we need to uphold the utmost standards of sustainability, efficiency, and food safety in our acquisition and distribution practices.

In our previous facility, we paid significant annual rent and incurred high costs in terms of energy consumption, obsolete equipment requiring frequent costly repairs, a leaking roof, and risk of food spoilage. We were forced to tum down millions of pounds of donated fresh produce and other nutritious perishables that wound up in landfills instead of going to residents in need of it.

We now have adequate cold storage to accommodate all donated produce offered to us and our dry storage space will accommodate racking and best-practices operations that reduce overall food waste and increase food safety. The space will also allow for a larger shopping area for the over 160 local nonprofits who rely on us for 95% of the food they need to stock their emergency pantries and meal programs. Our ability to increase membership was thwarted by the capacity constraints and serious safety concerns of our previous building and we are now adding more members, thereby broadening the range of available emergency food resources for seniors, children, veterans, homeless persons, and other residents in need.