Flagstaff Family Food Center

Flagstaff Family Food Center: Food Bank and Kitchen opened its doors Christmas Day 1991 as the Flagstaff Family Food Center. Since then, the non-profit organization has served over 1.8 million hot meals. The center’s merger with Northern Arizona Food Bank in the fall of 2013 prompted the new name and widened the scope of services that are provided to the local community.

Now as the food hub for the greater Flagstaff area, the center continues to provide hot meals, off-site cold lunches and children’s literacy programs while adding food warehousing, emergency food box distribution and grocery shopping for other non-profit agencies to their spectrum of services. The merger helped streamline the collection and redistribution of sustainable food resources by working as one centralized entity.

Flagstaff Family Food Center: Food Bank and Kitchen (FFFC:FBK) receives food from St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, local grocery stores, businesses, individuals, and various organizations in Flagstaff. In addition, the 501(c)3 non-profit organization receives financial support from the United Way of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff Community Foundation, Forest Highlands Foundation, the City of Flagstaff and other social and philanthropic organizations. However, the non-profit relies heavily on support from donors like you. Most funding comes from individual donors.

Because so many of the hot meal clients are children, (about 20% of the evening meals are served to children under the age of 16), a children’s literacy program has grown out of the need for help with reading and homework. Adjacent to the busy dining room, children gather in the Paul Sweitzer Children’s Reading Room where they interact with volunteer tutors and a variety of educational computer programs, games and crafts. Since the inception of the literacy program in 1996, over 78,921 books have been read to children of all ages and over 24,930 books were gifted to the participants of the successful literacy program.

Speaking of volunteers, volunteers are the lifeblood of the organization. The FFFC:FBK is governed by an voluntary Board of Directors. Its members represent a variety of local interests. More than twenty-five volunteers each day help collect, triage and redistribute food; fill emergency food boxes; cook and serve hot meals; recycle cardboard and organic materials; and wash dishes and clean-up.
 
WHAT WE DO

1. Free Hot Meals: We serve approximately 7500 sit-down hot meals every month in a family-friendly environment, seven days a week from 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
2. Over 1500 Emergency Food Boxes that include fresh produce are distributed to local Flagstaff families every month.
3. We provide free grocery shopping for close to 30 local non-profit agencies by allowing them to ‘shop’ our warehouse.
4. Flagstaff Kitchen Mobile Lunch Program: 2100 pre-made lunches are distributed every month to seven non-profit agencies throughout Flagstaff.
5. Kitchen Door Lunch Program: Over 1350 “to-go” sack lunches are distributed out of the kitchen door each month.
6. Breakfast Burrito Program: 800 burritos are delivered to the local homeless shelter every month.
7. Backpack Program: Every week, we work in collaboration with United Way of Flagstaff to distribute 35 backpacks to high-risk elementary school children.
8. Children's Literacy Programs: The Paul Sweitzer Reading Room hosted almost 6000 visits from children of all ages while over 4500 books were given away to those children in 2013. To promote literacy, family members and volunteers are encouraged to read aloud to the children.

Behind every number is a person, and behind every person is a story. Part of that story is that there is no charge for any of the above FFFC:FBK services, and consequently, we do truly rely on your generous support. We all would like to thank you for your gift.