Vermont Food Bank Opens Southern Vt. Warehouse

(Host) The Vermont Food Bank is opening a new warehouse in the old Book Press Building in Brattleboro. 

The 21,000-square-foot facility will help to supply food shelves, after-school programs, shelters, and other groups in the state's three southern counties.

The food bank acquires and distributes food for nearly 300 agencies throughout the state. Its main warehouse is in South Barre.

Until now food destined for southern Vermont has had to go through the central Vermont warehouse for processing. And southern Vermont agencies have had to pay the cost of transporting the food those extra miles.

Judy Stermer of the Vermont Food Bank says that in the past those agencies limited themselves to monthly food orders.

(Stermer) "So this facility allows us to be much more efficient. It allows the southern counties the ability to pick up products now at that facility so that they can start distributing more products and creating greater access to emergency food for Vermonters in the southern part of the state."

(Host) Melinda Bussino directs the Brattleboro Drop-in Center, whose food shelf  receives Food Bank food. She says the new warehouse couldn't have come at a better time, because demand is up.

(Bussino) "It went from seven-thousand one-hundred and some odd individual people who had seen food shelf use at least once in 2008, to over 9,300 in 2009."