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Have to check that out. Currently unemployed.

I am currently unemployed as well. I had a bad spell when after the recession of 2008 and we were going to food pantries for a while. We managed to avoid doing food stamps, though at some of the pantries there were people trying to sign us up. I understood, but we never got that desperate.

The funny thing about food pantries is their randomness. We had three young children and were grateful to get anything. So, I would always ask, what don't people want to take? That's what we would take.

Now here's the kicker, food pantry users have different tastes than the general public. The frozen pizzas go first. The $15/pound fresh salmon sits unwanted. What a land where food fit for a nobleman is given away otherwise unwanted.

Now, with that you also get Pumpkin Spice Cheerios in December. Reeses Puffs cereal (something my wife would NEVER feed our children normally) ALWAYS seem to be present. (Since then, two of my children have developed dairy sensitivities, so it would be my job to eat them.) One time we scored locally sourced VENISON! Yum-yum. So with this random assortment we were always able to approach the gifts with a sense of humor and adventure. We are thankful for the generosity of stores and others who helped us out in our temporary time of need.

Have to check that out. Currently unemployed.

Hint: Small town food pantries have better selection and shorter wait times than the city types. Nothing against the folks in the cities, they have more difficult clientele, and a much bigger workload.

Some of these are church run, or even special interest groups (e.g. home schoolers). Trader Joe's was particularly generous to home schoolers, give lots of fresh foods for large families that were not necessarily indigent, but were best situated to use large quantities of fresh food before it went bad with the family of eight kids, etc. The donor Joe's was 40 miles away, so I suspect they want the food to go where they aren't, so they don't risk a sale. It is also possible that the Joe's in question had a manager who was partial to home school families.