How To Find A Food Bank Or Pantry Quickly

If you worry about filling your fridge each week, you may need to apply for long-term food assistance like SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) or WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
Both can help you buy the groceries you need to ensure your family’s nutrition is up to par. As stated, however, there is an application process involved. You will have to meet specific requirements based on income and other factors. Most importantly, you will have to wait to receive food from SNAP, WIC, and similar programs.

What can you do if you need food right this moment? Besides making a call to friends, family, or neighbors, you can search for emergency food assistance online. Doing so can help you see where the nearest food bank or pantry is so you can get some supplies to stave off hunger.
While you could do a direct search for food pantries in your area, here are a few websites that make the task much easier.

Food Pantry Sites

Feeding America

Do you want a directory of almost all of the food pantries and food banks in the U.S.? Feeding America is a site that can give you just that, as it is a network of 60,000-plus food pantries and over 200 food banks that can be found in every state.
Using the Feeding America site to find food assistance couldn’t be easier. Head to its home page, and you can find food distribution sites near you by entering your zip code here.

Once the site generates a list of local food banks or pantries, click on each to see its contact info. Then give them a call or a visit to see if they can help.
Feeding America helps with emergency food assistance, but it can also be a long-term solution. It can offer information on several food programs that can be long-term fixes for your nutritional needs, such as SNAP, WIC, summer meals for kids, dietary benefits for seniors, and more. You can find info on all of these programs here towards the bottom of the page.

Foodpantries.org

You can find soup kitchens, food shelves, food banks, and food pantries near you in seconds with this handy website.
Just pick your state from the menu, and you’ll get a list of food resources broken down into cities. Click on each city, and you’ll see blurbs containing contact info, hours of operation, and more for each resource.
To make the most of your trip to this site, select multiple cities near you to expand your options.

Ample Harvest

It won’t take you a long time to find a food pantry here. Enter your zip code and select a search radius, and you’ll get a list of food assistance options that you can contact to find out more info. The larger the radius you pick, the more options you’ll get to choose from.