Rhinelander Area Food Pantry volunteers used to bag up a couple granola bars, maybe some individual microwave mac and cheeses, some apples, and other similar food items each week as part of its old Weekend Food for Kids program.
The bags would go to the Rhinelander School District and be sent home with kids on Friday. Sometimes those backpacks would get left on the bus. The single serving food tended to be more expensive and sometimes ultra processed.
“We really knew that we could come up with a better model that eliminated that and also helped us really realign with our mission,” said Rhinelander Area Food Pantry Executive Director Courtney Smith. “We wanted to have a different relationship with kids and adults.”
Now, under the Hodag Monster Meals program, volunteers will once a month pack up bags with foods like a box of cereal, canned soup, a fresh loaf of bread, jars of peanut butter and jelly, eggs, some produce, and milk.
Parents or guardians then come pick up the bags. There are no income restrictions. They just need to prove they have a kid or teen.
Smith says doing it this way provides more nutritionally dense food while spending about $12,000 less on food. She calls it the duality of non-profit work—the food pantry not being a business model while also having to be responsible businesspeople.
“We are stewards of the time and the energy, the devotion, and the money that the community puts into our programming,” said Smith. “We really did need to be responsible to that and take a look at the expense of the program, where the program really wasn't owning up to what we said it was doing.”
It also makes the adults hold responsibility for it rather than the kids.
“It's a really powerful thing. It's hard to quantify or to measure, but I've seen it in our summer programs, and I've seen it in our Hodag Monster Meals program, kids want to see adults taking responsibility. It makes their adults reliable and safe. It gives kids confidence,” said Smith.
They average about 225 bags a month.
It is first come, first serve with some months, like May, running out of food.
Smith says they have a general number of about 685 kids in the community that could be served by this program, but much like the pantry, only about a third show up each time.
“Food insecurity or when households just are challenged to meet their nutritional needs, it's not an every month or an every week for our households,” said Smith. “There are different costs that households face during different times of the year. We can actually see that in usership both at the pantry and in our Hodag kids programs.”
Hodag Monster Meals are distributed on the 3rd Thursday of each month. There is one more distribution day this school year on June 18th.
Then the pantry transitions to its summer kids food program: the Hodag Food Wagon.
