Lined with boxes of avocados, jalapenos and bananas and refrigerated cases dotted with yogurt, eggs and shredded cheese, Food Bank for Larimer County opened the doors of its no-cost fresh food share market Wednesday afternoon.
Shoppers walked through the snaking grocery aisle in the organization’s airy Fort Collins warehouse, grabbing produce and perusing its boxes of prepared snacks. Meanwhile, volunteers milled behind the scenes — repackaging bulk potatoes into small mesh bags and weeding through cracked eggs in donated cartons.
The food bank’s no-cost markets are hosted five days a week and serve as one of its main avenues for distributing food to the community — a 40-year effort that has grown from humble roots in Fort Collins.
Food Bank for Larimer County started in 1984 as the Larimer County Food Distribution Center and has gone from providing more than 55,000 pounds of food in its first 12 months to now distributing enough food for up to 10 million meals a year, according to its website.
Throughout the years, it’s distributed millions of meals, was on the front lines of food insecurity at the beginning of the Great Recession, expanded with a permanent distribution facility in Loveland, upped its mobile food pantries and weathered the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s getting ready to celebrate the 20th year of its biggest annual fundraising event — the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority’s Great Plates dining promotion — and bracing for changes amid potential federal funding cuts, CEO Amy Pezzani said.
How does Food Bank for Larimer County work?
The private nonprofit primarily gets its food from retail store donations — rescuing items that are edible but unsellable for a variety of reasons, Pezzani said.
The food bank also gets food from U.S. hunger relief organization Feeding America, of which it is part, as well as smaller amounts from federal government programs like The Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program.
It’s then distributed through a series of programs like Nourishing Network, which provides food to the food bank’s 127 agency partners across Larimer County; Nutritious Kitchen, which cooks meals for children and seniors; and its no-cost fresh food share markets, which boast a selection of rescued food like produce, dairy, meat and bread as well as diapers and baby wipes.
Food given to the food bank through government programs is only available to households earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level — $64,300 for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ poverty guidelines for 2025.
“But if someone comes to us and is above that (threshold), we can still give them food, just not the government commodities,” Pezzani clarified.
The food bank: a community-supported effort
Food Bank for Larimer County’s operations are largely run with the help of its volunteers. More than 11,000 volunteers donated a total of 69,000 hours to the food bank in 2024, Pezzani said, adding that the food bank has 51 paid staffers.
“The community support we have is absolutely incredible,” Pezzani said.
The food bank gets a vast majority of its funding — well over 60% — from individual donors in the community. Remaining funds largely come from revenue from fundraising events like Great Plates, Pezzani said.
While not buoyed by federal funding, Pezzani said the food bank would be affected if the $2 trillion worth of federal spending cuts called for in the budget bill passed by the House on Tuesday affected programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
From USA TODAY: What is in the just-passed House Republican budget bill?
“Many of the individuals that come to us for food receive Medicaid. If they lose that, they then have even less money to afford food,” Pezzani said.
Cuts to SNAP, “which, again, not all of our clients rely on, but many do,” would also lead to increased needs at the food bank, Pezzani said.
In February of 2023, when Congress ended COVID-era additional emergency allotments to SNAP participants, Food Bank for Larimer County saw a 30% increase in food needs within the month, Pezzani said.
“Some of those cuts would have a huge impact on the people who come to us needing food,” she added.
Looking ahead, Pezzani said the food bank hopes to continue making small programmatic changes to better serve its clients. A month ago, it set aside time for a weekly food share market that is solely open to individuals with disabilities and those 60 years old or older in order to give them more time to shop.
The organization’s Nutritious Kitchen also recently started a pilot program making and freezing nutritionally-tailored meals that are distributed to seniors in partnership with UCHealth, Pezzani said.
Great Plates: the food bank’s biggest fundraising event of the year
In 2006, Food Bank for Larimer County partnered with the Fort Collins Downtown Business Association to start Great Plates, Fort Collins’ now largest and longest-running dining promotion.
New to Great Plates? Here how the dining promotion (and food bank fundraiser) works
Its goal was to draw more diners to Old Town during a slow time for restaurants while bringing in donations for the food bank, Pezzani said.
The Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority took over the DBA’s promotions, including Great Plates, in 2020 and has run Great Plates since, according to past Coloradoan reporting. The DBA dissolved in 2022.
Since 2008, the fundraiser has brought in $1.15 million in donations for the food bank, according to DDA figures. Long-lived Fort Collins restaurants like The Melting Pot and CooperSmith’s Old Town Brewpub have been participating in it since the beginning.
Fort Collins Great Plates: Take your pick from dozens of menu specials at 50 participating Old Town eateries
“(Great Plates) is our largest fundraising event for the food bank, but it also generates a lot of awareness for the food bank in general,” Pezzani said.
Over the years, Pezzani recalls eating out during Great Plates and occasionally telling her servers that she works for the food bank. Some have told her they had utilized the food bank at some point, she said.
“It’s really impactful to me that there’s always someone in our community who we have touched,” Pezzani added.
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This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Food Bank for Larimer County looks toward Great Plates fundraiser
