Tupper Lake Community Food Pantry serving important community need in new quarters, with new director

by Dan McClelland

Nearly a year in a new location and under the direction of a new leader the Tupper Lake Food Pantry continues to provide a life-sustaining role in our community.

In their bright and warm new quarters in the HGA parish building at 40 Marion Ave. things have improved for its small band of loyal volunteers, now that the not for profit operation has moved from the dank and dark quarters in the basement of the Aaron Maddox building where it operated for too many years.

The move was made possible after years in the basement of the town building by town leaders and by Fr. James Teti and the parish of St. Alphonsus/ Holy Name, which gave it a new home.

The move to new quarters came on October 27, 2023.

At that time Volunteer Director Lisa Kimpflen stepped in to replace long-time director Laurie Pickering.

In one former classroom in the former Holy Ghost Academy at the west end of the building, all the packing of food now happens.

According to Mrs. Kimpflen the shelves and refrigerators in that room next to the entrance are organized by meal types: breakfast, lunch, side dishes, snacks and miscellaneous. “This is the room we do all the packing of orders!”

She said the bank of refrigerators and freezers which line an entire wall “hold much of the basic” foodstuffs.

Mrs. Kimpflen said the two rooms that now comprise the Tupper Lake Food Pantry are organized in such a way so the volunteers can do as little of the running between the rooms as possible.

The second room is the back-up for the storage of food, and houses the in-take desk at its door where the orders of clients are processed, she explained during a recent tour of the new quarters. Both rooms are very bright, basked in the natural light of the walls of windows in each.

Christine Russell is the volunteer at the pantry who most often runs the in-take desk.

Clients order off a form where they can choose three lunches, three breakfasts, three dinners twice a month. Breakfasts include hot and cold cereal, pancakes, eggs, French toast, coffee, tea, cocoa, juice, bread/margarine, milk, cottage cheese and yogurt.

Lunch choices are dry or canned soup and crackers, sliced meat and cheese, canned pasta, canned tuna and canned chicken.

For dinners, clients can choice a variety of things, including tuna or salmon casserole, chili, spaghetti or goulash, fish, chicken, pork chops, pizza, tacos, hamburgers, roast beef (for families of three or more), Shepherd’s Pie (ground chicken or turkey), ham, ham steak, rice and beans and pork loin roast (families of three or more. There are also dinner specials.

In each category, heart healthy choices are plentiful.

If items are out of stock, the volunteers will substitute for them.

To order people can call (518) 359-3080 on the day of pick-up. Pick-up times are scheduled by appointment and food must be picked up on the same day it is ordered. Orders must be placed no later than a half hour before closing.

The pantry is open on Tuesdays from 9a.m. to noon and Thursdays from 1p.m. to 4p.m.

Mrs. Kimpflen said the pantry’s mandate is to provide three days worth of food, twice a month.

A typical week might see food distributed to 30 local families.

“Some come twice a month, some might only come once a month and some people only come to us occasionally- if they are in a pinch!”

“We see a huge spike in clients, starting the third week of the month and it ramps up until the end of the month when many people are running low on funds.”

“Typically, however, the amount of food we give people- depending on the size of their appetite, will last more than four days,” she said of the quantities of food in each order. “I feel the quantities are very generous!”

“So if a person calls us and says they want for breakfast hot cereal, pancakes and eggs, they will receive two packages of hot oatmeal, a box of pancake mix (a dozen or more pancakes) and a half dozen eggs. That’s for one person.”

“If you are a family- and that’s one of the questions Christina asks clients each visit-” more food is given. The people served by the pantry are re-certified on a regular basis as to family size, place of residence, etc.

She said for a family of four with two adults and two children, they might get an entire box of cold cereal (10 to 12 servings), one or two boxes of pancake mix and one dozen eggs.

Sometimes families can get two dozen eggs per order- because we routinely get “free eggs” from agencies like state-funded “Nourish New York,” which provides fresh and healthy foods to food pantries across the state.

“When we get extra, we give extra,” she said of their rule.

She said for lunches, a single person could receive a can of soup and a sleeve of crackers. If they choose macaroni and cheese they’ll get a box of it. If they choose canned pasta they receive a can in their order. If sliced meat and cheese is ordered, they’ll get a pound of sliced meat and a pound of cheese.

If a family of four orders lunch, they would get two or three cans of soup and a sleeve of crackers, a pound of sliced meat and maybe an extra package of cheese. If the family ordered canned pasta, it would likely get three to four cans.

A similar arrangement works for dinners, and according to Mrs. Kimpflen there are many good choices.

“We also usually have some kind of dinner special- particularly if we have received an abundance of some product.”

“Right now we received a quantity of pulled pork free. We ordered some barbecue sauce and right now we are offering “Pulled Park Barbecue” as our dinner special.

She said the only restriction on dinner is that “we ask people to choose no more than two beef-based dinners.”

Pulling out one of the forms she must routinely file with the regional food pantry, it showed that during the month of September the local pantry provided food to 93 households- all from Tupper Lake.

The 93 households reported by her consisted of 39 children, 93 adults and 31 elderly. She admitted there is “a real need” for food assistance among our elderly citizens, some of whom live on very small Social Security allotments and pensions.

“There are also a lot of working poor families here- but there are many elderly living far below federal poverty lines.

“We are not allowed to know” the types of elderly assistance people receive. But, she said, on their new client in-take form, “it lists what qualifies someone to receive food from us. Either they have to be receiving other kinds of assistance like SNAP or WIC, or its based on their income, based on the size of the family.

She said her agency can’t asked for proof of income from anyone. “We have to take people’s word” for what they get as income.

She said, for example, to qualify for their food a family of four would have to have a total family income of at or below $70,200 per year. That covers many families here, she guessed.

“Many families of four here are living well below that sum.”

“Our two largest demographics of people who need our help are the elderly and people addicted to drugs.”

Although the pantry officials can’t ask for proof of income, they can ask for proof of residency” in the 12986 area code.

“Anybody can get food from us once,” without documentation. “When they come in, however, if they plan to return, we set up a card file for them, get them registered.”

“We tell them if they plan to return, they need to fill out this form we give them and we need to have them provide us with proof of residency that they reside in Tupper Lake (or Piercefield). The in-eligibility forms are just a single page and easy to complete.

She said all they need for proof of residency is a medical bill with the person’s name and address, an electrical bill, etc. A driver’s license isn’t verifiable proof of residency, however, she noted.

There must be proof of residency furnished for each child, because sometimes different parents who are separated claim the same kids, she told the Free Press. -Or a grand parent may claim them too.

“We do a lot of cross-checking of information people provide, and it helps that a lot of our volunteers are long-time Tupper Lakers who know a lot of people here.”

“We had to start requiring proof of residency, after years of not having to do it, because there was such a large level of fraud happening here!”

Typically the volunteers at the pantry only volunteer their time during the hours the agency is open two days a week. “Occasionally,” she says, “we’ll have people in here when deliveries arrive.”

For example, once a month there is a Wesleyan Church in North Bangor “that receives a mass distribution of food from the Food Bank in Albany. “Once a month we go there with three pick-up trucks and bring back a ton of food….actually, three half-ton trucks worth of food.”

She said the food is unloaded from “a monster trailer” into the trucks of pantry volunteers from all over the county. The pallets of food are dropped by loader onto the street and the volunteers load it onto their trucks from there.

Mrs. Kimpflen said because the trailer is refrigerated, much of the food is frozen and can last the hour-long trip back to Tupper without damage.

“A lot of time its fresh produce near the end of its life that the Albany Food Bank needs to get ride of!”

Eight member food agencies qualify to receive the mass distribution food.

Four cases of fresh pumpkins for pie-making came with the last distribution.

“We let the pastor of the church who runs the program know if we are coming that day, and when we get closer to home- like at Paul Smith’s College- we let our volunteers know we’re a half an hour a way so they can help us unload. “And that way too we are not wasting our volunteers’ time.”

She said it takes about two hours to unload and process the arriving food from the North Bangor church.

“As part of the processing the volunteers have to log every product coming into the pantry.”

She said they also have to mark out every bar code because people have been known to take the food we give them and take them to stores for a refund.

The volunteer director says they also have to check the termination or “best to use by” date of every product to make sure the food they are distributing is not outdated and unsafe for consumption.

“That’s why food drives can become problematic,”- because people sometimes donate food that is far beyond their safe use dates. “The oldest product I ever saw come in here was when the elementary school did a food drive and one product had a use-by date of 2011.”

“Our message to the community right now is if you want to make a food donation, please, please, please look at the date of expiry. Don’t give us something outdated… don’t give us rusty cans, don’t give us a half box of potato flakes!”

She said unacceptable goods actually cost the pantry money, as it has to dispose of those things at the transfer station. “Those kind of donations hurt us, because people are asking us to get rid of their garbage!”

She said the pantry has a heightened obligation to provide safe food, more so than local families do. “Some people believe they can consume expired food, but we can’t distribute it, because it may be unsafe.”

The director said they don’t have the luxury of opening an expired food product to see if the contents are okay.

She said they just recently received a food drive bounty from the Tupper Lake Christian Center off Main Street. “Every single thing they brought us was usable...not a single one was out of date. They were extremely prudent about checking everything!”

“If people or groups want to give us stuff we need, please check everything before giving it to us!”

“The other thing to know going into the holiday season, is that every year we give boxes of food for Christmas dinner. All our regular clients get one. The boxes contain a turkey or a ham and every thing to go with it for a holiday meal.”

She said people can call us and adopt a family and we will assign them a family size. Donations of money are also important, because if the pantry can’t assemble enough meal boxes for the requests it has, the volunteers have to go out and buy the products to put in them.

Food boxes (or baskets) should contain a turkey or ham, gravy, two kinds of vegetables, rolls and butter, Christmas snacks, cranberry or pineapple sauce, pickles and olives, stuffing, potatoes or sweet potatoes or yams, cheese and crackers, fresh fruit, coffee, tea or cocoa and pie or other desserts.

Solicitation letters are going out October 15 but people who haven’t done so in the past can adopt a family by creating a food box or to make a donation to fund a holiday meal by calling the pantry at the phone number above.

The Tupper Lake Community Food Pantry is always in the need for more volunteers to add to the small cadre of folks working this important place right now.

The current volunteer team includes Claire Lucas, Mike and Christine Russell, Kathy Albert, Janet Perth, Natalie Zurek, Sherry Bradley, Jim Bradley, Joe Kimpflen and Noah Tyo.

The pantry could also use the donations of or funds to buy a large refrigerator and a new freezer right now to replace failing ones. “We’re looking for the largest possible non-commercial refrigerator and freezer.”

Used appliances don’t have the lasting power or the reliability the pantry relies on, she says.

A big wish too for the pantry would be a back-up generator to power their rooms and appliances in power outages.

A generator large enough to run the entire parish building is a bigger ask and could run in excess of $50,000.

If somehow the pantry received a major donation of $100,000 or more that would fund a whole-building generator and perhaps even a box truck to collect its donated goods at distribution sites around the North Country.

“Three or four times a month, in addition to the mass distribution at the Bangor church, we’re going to Saranac Lake for distributions from the Regional Food Bank in Albany where food is dropped off there at the civic center. Mrs. Kimpflen said some of that comes free, some the pantry has to pay for at a discounted cost.

Sometimes the pantry buys staples at Save-A-Lot and at Shaheen’s- things they can’t get at the distribution sites and food banks. Both are very generous to the pantry- particularly at Christmas time when the food baskets (boxes) are built and distributed to many here, she noted.

Over the course of any given year the pantry spends about $5,000 a month on food purchases, to supplement the free food it receives. She estimated that if it had to purchase all its food at market prices, the food tab could exceed $150,000 a year.

The Tupper Lake Community Food Pantry is a shining example of Tupper Lake people helping their neighbors in a very discreet but important way!