On a recent Wednesday, the line began to form around the corner of 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard by 3 p.m., an hour before the Food Bank for New York City Pantry and Community Kitchen opened for a free dinner.
“What time is it?” chef Sheri Jefferson, 60, asked just after 4. Calmly but swiftly, she began assembling hundreds of plates of curried potatoes, corned beef, salad and cornbread she had spent the afternoon preparing, placing each plate on a black serving tray.
Colorful plates met eager eyes as volunteers set down meal trays on the dining tables for hungry people to dig into. Few of them knew the journey the food had taken to arrive in this corner of Harlem.
Chef Sheri Jefferson prepares warm meals for seniors at the Food Pantry for New York City’s Harlem kitchen, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Every weekday, the Food Bank for New York City receives about 50 to 75 truckloads of fresh produce, meats, seafood, dairy products and canned goods from around the country at their 90,000 square feet warehouse in Hunts Point in The Bronx, said associate director of operations Ron Olaizola.
It then sorts, repacks and redistributes that food to more than 1,000 pantries, schools, churches and community centers, including the kitchen in Harlem — cycling through roughly 3 million pounds of goods a month.
“Believe it or not, managing a food bank is much harder than managing a deployment,” said Olaizola, a reservist for the Air Force who had just returned from a six-month mission providing humanitarian aid for Syrian and Gazan refugees in Jordan last year.
Food Bank for NYC supervisor Ron Olaizola oversees goods from the The Emergency Food Assistance Program inside their Hunts Point Market distribution warehouse, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
But feeding the hungry is about to get much harder. The U.S. Department of Agriculture halted deliveries to food banks in six states without explanation, Politico reported in March. While the department told Reuters later that month it is still making purchases to support food banks, it did not answer questions about the missing deliveries.
Now, those interruptions are also impacting New York.
Executives for the Food Bank for New York City said 2.5 million pounds of food that was supposed to arrive at their warehouse from USDA in May and June has been put on an indefinite pause.
There were 3.3 million pounds of food in Food Bank for NYC’s Hunts Point market warehouse, April 2, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
That stop comes as the Trump Administration is reviewing $500 million in Congress-approved funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program — about $30 million of which U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said flows to New York State. Food Bank warehouse operators say that program currently accounts for roughly 65% of its inventory.
Recent cuts to funding and programs across multiple federal agencies, coupled with those proposed at the city level, has left food banks scrambling for ways to fill the holes in their patchwork sources of funding — especially as they say demand at pantries has exceeded even the extraordinarily high levels seen during the pandemic.
“I’d love to sit and talk with you today and say that post-COVID we’ve seen a receding of the demand. I’ve been doing this work for almost 20 years now, and I never thought I would see the need as high as it is now,” Leslie Gordon, Food Bank president and CEO, told THE CITY. “The amount of support that comes through USDA across the country, not just in New York City — if it were to go away, we couldn’t fill the hole by ourselves. It’s just too big.”
A Food Bank for New York City worker moves boxes of inside their sprawling Hunts Point Market warehouse, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The USDA last month also notified state officials across the country that it’s canceling the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program after this fiscal year, which ends in September. The program, known in New York State as New York Food for New York Families (NYFNYF), connects food distributors with “traditionally disadvantaged” local farmers and bakers.
NYFNYF has been providing more than $19 million over the last two years to at least 15 organizations to purchase and redistribute food in New York City, including $2 million for the Food Bank and $1.9 million for the New York Common Pantry, which partners with nearly 150 local pantries, schools, community centers and churches to give out free food.
While USDA described the cut as a “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives,” it’s a program Common Pantry executive director Stephen Grimaldi calls a “win-win-win” because it boosts local producers, supports hungry New Yorkers and reduces environmental pollution by eliminating long-haul deliveries.
“This grant was totally transformational for us because this is what we want to do more of. It’s an example of how the government can do good,” said Grimaldi, who now has to find a way to replace funding from NYFNYF, which makes up 13% of his organization’s operating budget.
A Common Pantry volunteer stacks produce bags ahead of the East Harlem food bank afternoon distribution, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
”We’re spending so much time with DOGE and everything else talking about all the waste and fraud, and the reality is that…we provide such an efficient service and we help humanity. It’s such a shame.”
Cutting funding for NYFNYF affects local growers, too, Grimaldi said. Megan Murphy, the Common Pantry’s food sourcing manager, said the organization is currently the largest purchaser for three of the farmers it buys from.
“Two of them at the end of the last growing season said that without our orders, they wouldn’t have been able to survive another,” Murphy told THE CITY.
Common Pantry volunteers put produce in bags ahead of the East Harlem food bank afternoon distribution, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Other cuts are already taking a toll — including the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which the Trump administration suspended in February. FEMA currently owes a total of $1.25 million to nearly 100 organizations in already approved funding, according to Grace Bonilla, president and CEO of United Way of New York City, which distributes funding to 400 food pantries in New York City.
“Many of them were approved to get reimbursed, but with this pause they’re not gonna see this money,” Bonilla told THE CITY. “It’s getting to a tipping point where some of them are honestly talking about whether they keep their doors open. And for neighborhoods that are desperately needing those pantries to be there, that’s a really scary thought.”
A FEMA spokesperson told THE CITY that the agency is “instituting additional reviews on all grants to non-governmental organizations” to “ensure the alignment of its grant programs with President Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s direction that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used wisely and for mission critical efforts.”
Food Bank for New York City volunteer Meilin Zhang buses meals during their Harlem dinner serving, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
According to the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, nearly 15% of New Yorkers experienced food insecurity in 2022, while more than 40% of adults lived in a household that’s at risk of being food insecure. Those conditions were more dire in Brooklyn, Queens and especially The Bronx, where one in three children are food insecure.
With the federal cutoffs, many food banks and pantries are now looking to the state and the city to help fill their plates.
Some are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to allocate $75 million for statewide hunger relief programs in the now-overdue state budget. In the meantime, Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary city budget for the upcoming fiscal year is proposing a $39 million cut, from $60 million in fiscal year 2025 to $21 million in fiscal year 2026, for the Community Food Connection program — the city’s primary source of emergency food funding which disburses money to 700 community kitchens and food pantries across the five boroughs
Last week, food bank and pantry leaders gathered outside City Hall to call on Mayor Eric Adams to allocate $100 million to the program.
Food bank supporters rally at City Hall against budget cuts, April 3, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
“What this does is hopefully help us weather the storm that we know is coming,” said Carlos Rodriguez, chief policy and operations officers for City Harvest. “It is cloudy.”
‘Sometimes They Just Cut You Off’
At the Common Pantry’s distribution site in East Harlem on a recent Wednesday afternoon, volunteers were busy unloading a truck filled with 5,000 pounds of NYFNYF produce freshly delivered from its warehouse in Hunts Point — where staff had spent the morning pre-packing bags full of fresh kale, potatoes, carrots, onions and green peppers to deliver to its local pantry partners over the next two days.
Inside in the kitchen, where pop music played overhead, volunteers formed a production line around tables full of cabbages, plantains, corn, carrots and other vegetables and fruits, ready to put together pantry bags for visitors who had been trickling in since 10 a.m.
Erin Lively volunteers at the Common Pantry food kitchen in East Harlem while visiting friends from Arizona, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Among the visitors were sisters Sandra and Korona Salter, who emerged from inside the pantry building with bags full of fresh produce for their family, including their four other siblings.
“We’d be sad — extremely sad if we didn’t have this,” said Sandra, 20, who comes to the pantry on behalf of her mother nearly every week. “We need protein. It’s important for us, for our bodies. We need nutrition and all that.”
Sisters Sandra Salter, left, and Korana Salter picked up produce from the Common Pantry food bank in East Harlem, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Demand has consistently increased across the Common Pantry’s locations and partner sites, Grimaldi said. The group served 17% more meals last year than the year before, he added, and 13% more meals this March compared to the same time last year.
Many pantry visitors told THE CITY that the rising cost of groceries has made their trips to the pantry an increasingly essential routine.
Maria Leon, 42, left the pantry with a cart full of fruits, lettuce, rice and beans from her family of four. She’s been visiting the pantry about twice a month since the pandemic to help put food on the table, she said.
The pantry bags have helped her save “mucho dinero,” she said, especially since her husband, a construction worker, has been having a hard time finding work lately.
“I sometimes no have the money, and the supermarket is pricey,” said Leon, who emigrated to New York City from Mexico 26 years ago. “It changed my life.”
Gladis Pauta, who was visiting the pantry Wednesday to pick up food for her family of seven, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s lot of help because food right now is expensive — very expensive,” Pauta said in Spanish, “This for us is a blessing from God, it’s is a big help. The small check we get might not always be sufficient.”
Gladis Pauta picked up fresh produce at Common Pantry in East Harlem, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Down the block, Shavonda Dew and Jay Branch sat on a stoop to exchange items they had received from the Common Pantry. An older man who had just left the pantry stopped by with his cart, too, offering bags of beans and grains to the two mothers.
Dew, a mother of three, said she’d started visiting the pantry about two weeks ago, when her food benefit was suddenly cut by $600 a month and a teacher at her son’s school handed her a booklet with a list of food pantries in the area.
“Everything we get from welfare these days, they don’t last,” Dew said. Branch, a mother of one, chimed in: “Sometimes they just cut you off — no explanation.”
Sorting through the pantry items, the two mothers began planning meals for their kids for the week: Tuna salad for lunch, fruits for snacks, and oat milk for smoothies.
East Harlem resident Jay Branch give some produce from the Common Pantry to a neighbor, April 2, 2025. Credit: Haidee Chu/THE CITY
“A lot of people think when you get food stamps, you spend it on lobsters and seafood or something, or you spend it on yourself or you cash it in,” Branch said. “But with real people and real parents, we care more about the onions and potatoes — stuff that last, stuff that you can throw in the freezer and it will be okay. With produce you can always chop them up and throw them in the freezer.”
Several food bank executives told THE CITY that they expect to see more people like Dew at the pantries if the Republican majority in Congress follows through with the sweeping cut they’ve proposed to federal food stamps, otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
‘It’s Really Gonna Hurt’
At the 4 p.m. dinner at the pantry and kitchen in central Harlem, migrants who had arrived in the city from Colombia and Venezuela about six months ago started mixing with seniors who have been in the center since the afternoon for lunch, which is provided for free to those who are 60 years old and up.
“I just like to cook what people enjoy,” said Jefferson, a single mother who prepares enough food at the kitchen each day to serve about 500 people. “I’ve never been in a line or anything like that but I know struggle. I understand what it’s like.”
Food Bank for New York City volunteers plate dinner meals at their Harlem kitchen and pantry, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Mark Grant, 60, said he started coming to the Kitchen at least three or four times a week about six months ago, when he lost his job selling cars. Here, he said, he can get not only lunch and dinner, but pantry bags too.
“For me right now, there’s no income coming in, so this is where I come. So if it’s cut it’s really gonna hurt,” said Grant, who showcased the fresh fruits and canned foods he received from the pantry line earlier in the day.
“Sometimes I would say, what if this place didn’t exist, what would happen? Crime rate would’ve been gone up,” he continued. “If you can’t afford to put food on your table, but you could come to a place like this, you can get a meal and you don’t have to think about other things that are destructive.”
Arnold Blunt, 62, was also at the Community Kitchen Wednesday evening with friends he had met in the pantry line over the past two years. He said he’s particularly fond of chef Sheri Jefferson’s turkey wings, and that eating there has saved him hundreds of dollars every month.
Arnold Blunt, left, eats with friends at the Food Bank for New York City dinner serving, April 2, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“I thank God this place exists because it brings a lot of people together,” Blunt said. “If this place didn’t exist, we’d be protesting.”
He looked back at Jefferson, who was now surveying the dining room and greeting regulars.
“And Sheri would be protesting with us.”
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