A Santa Maria non-profit serving hundreds of families is looking for a new food distribution site.
Bill Mountford, the organizer behind the weekly Angel Food distributions, says when they first started giving out food in 2012, they served maybe a few dozen families.
Now, more than 400 families come out every Saturday for their drive-thru distributions, but starting next month, they will have to go somewhere else.
“To be able to give out this amount of food to everybody, it is hard when I see tears because we aren’t going to be able to do it anymore,” Mountford told KSBY.
On Saturday mornings throughout the past decade, hundreds of local families would line up in their cars off Stowell and Blosser roads in Santa Maria to receive the thousands of pounds of free fruit, vegetables and groceries handed out by Angel Food.
“To be able to have cars all the way around the block and to take up as much room as we do, it has worked, and it has been very ideal,” said Phil Young, who oversees the weekend handouts.
He says earlier this year, the new property owners of their distribution site told him they wouldn’t be able to stay.
“We are looking for another place to be able to on Friday prepare all of the food, and then have a place to deliver it on Saturday,” Young said.
Young says last year alone, his team distributed more than 1 million total pounds of food during their Saturday distributions.
Some locals who lined up for food at their event this past weekend say they will soon have to look elsewhere for their groceries.
“It is very sad because many of us would come here every weekend for some help. We won’t be able to anymore,” one Santa Maria man told KSBY.
Young adds that while their Saturday distributions will be coming to an end by September, Angel Food will prioritize its programs geared toward feeding Santa Maria’s unsheltered population, with active search efforts in place for a future weekend distribution site.
“We need a place around 3,000 to 4,000 square-feet with our trucks. We have people who are serving even today that were in the cars in lines. This ministry makes it available for people to give back to their community,” Young said.
Officials with the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County say other recurring weekend distributions can still be found on the first and third Saturdays of the month at Allan Hancock College, as well as another one on the second Saturday at the local Boys and Girls Club.
We reached out to the new property owners at Angel Food’s distribution site but they were unavailable for comment.
Angel Food’s last Saturday distribution will be on Saturday, Aug. 26.
