DENVER — Inflation has hit just about everything, including some of Denver's food banks. Paychecks aren't going as far as they used to, and it has forced people to look for help to make ends meet.
Lakewood-based nonprofit The Action Center posted on its Facebook page Tuesday searching for more donations because of a higher demand for free groceries. The influx in clients has emptied their shelves.
Jim Scharper, founder of Feeding Denver's Hungry, shared the same sentiment. Feeding Denver's Hungry is a nonprofit organization that provides free food in a grocery store-like setting.
9NEWS spoke with Scharper to discuss the impact inflation has made on his free grocery store.
(Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for context and clarity.)
9NEWS: Why did you decide to create a free grocery store?
Scharper: When COVID first started, we were putting together boxes. There was little dignity there. Now we’re providing more dignity. People are able to go shopping. They’ve got their own dietary needs for their family. People are able to pick out what’s good and best for their families, and it provides them a lot more dignity to be able to go shopping for themselves and their families.
The only thing that’s missing here is we don’t have a cash register at the end. We just push the cart out to the car and help them load it up.
How has inflation impacted the grocery store?
Scharper: It's been a crazy transition. Yesterday we had the signup for August begin, and within 24 hours all of our slots for August filled up. So we have no slots available for August.
Of the people that signed up for this next month, 43% are new clients that we’ve never seen before. It just breaks my heart to know that many people -- they’re working people that have families and pay their bills and they have nothing left for food at the end of the month.
We do our best to keep the shelves stocked, but every time we have people come through here and go shopping, they wipe our shelves clean and it’s getting harder and harder to source that food and resupply our grocery store.
I think we’re up to 650 families that come through here in a month, and each one of those is taking a carload of groceries home.
What can people do to help?
Scharper: We are not government funded. It’s me and my friends. We put together $20 at a time and we're able to buy the groceries for people that can't afford groceries, so we're very fortunate that we're able to keep up right now with what we're able to do. But finding a grant or finding a business so that we can get backing to make sure this continues, that's my goal.
So I'm very grateful that we're able to continue the Feeding Denver's Hungry grocery store, but we're still looking for donations.
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Latest from 9NEWS