St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport has had to change how it distributes items from its food pantry, created in 2009, after the area saw recent development and demographic changes.
In recent years, with the Ovation site coming into Newport and the change in ownership and rebranding of once lower-income housing units like nearby Riverchase and Victoria Square, the church’s food pantry started seeing fewer people coming through its doors. St. Paul’s Pantry Manager Chuck Grone said they had to develop a new idea to get supplies to where the people were, which is how they started delivering goods to local senior living facilities.
“The average rent from Hofbräuhaus all the way down through here (7 Court Place, Newport) is around $2,200 a month,” St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Reverend Matthew Young said. “So, we have plenty of new residents around here. They just don’t need this. So, the question is, what do you do?”
Before Riverchase and Victoria Square were bought in 2022, the church pantry served up to 100 families a month. Now, Grone said that number is closer to 30 a month.
The pantry also now serves roughly 125 goods each month to three of Newport’s affordable senior living facilities: Saratoga Place Apartments (serves approximately 35), Highland Village Apartments (serves approximately 40), and Grand Towers Apartments (serves approximately 50.) Supplies are taken to the apartments monthly and are meant to be roughly a week’s worth of groceries.
Grone said he has seen a demographic change in the people who visit the pantry at the church. He said before the pandemic and Victoria Square was rebranded, they used to have many families coming in. Now, it is primarily single or two-person households.
A challenge that Grone and Young said contributes to the fewer people visiting the pantry is that there used to be a bus stop at the corner of the church before the 3rd Street roundabout, which was removed. Young said they had a lot of visitors who traveled by bus.
“I think that the adaptive challenge is taking into where people are within the city that are not going to walk from here to wherever,” Young said. “Unless you drive, which many don’t, it is sort of a food desert; your closest is Kroger Pavilion.”
Besides food items like canned proteins and vegetables, meat, and produce, the pantry also hands out personal care items like diapers and toothpaste. Grone said pet food is also a hot commodity. The pantry partners with the Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati and works with Master Provisions in Elsmere and Panera Bread in Newport.
The pantry is also run as a choice model, meaning guests can “shop” for things they want and need instead of being handed a box with selected items.
Young said the choice pantry also encourages interaction and community building between people. Volunteers get to know people and their situations and have conversations with them.
“Pre-COVID-19, we were already heading towards an individualistic society, and COVID-19 made it so much worse,” Grone said. “So this can help us with that, especially for people who live alone, perhaps don’t have as much interaction in senior living, those kinds of things.”
Grone said the transition to mainly serving senior living facilities has made him see a difference between the people they serve there and those who visit the church pantry.
“I think it’s because they (seniors) are stable, they have a place to live, they have heat,” Grone said. “They have other people around them if they’re in trouble. People who come in here don’t always have that.”
Young said that for future expansion, he likes the idea of putting a fridge and table of food outside of the church for people passing by to take from, regardless of their living situation.
“If we’re all privileged people, it’s still really nice if I bought you a cup of coffee. Right?” Young said. “So, the spiritual principle is generosity, regardless of someone’s need.”
Donations can be dropped off at the food pantry at 7 Court Place in Newport. The food pantry is open on Wednesdays, and the shopping time is from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.