Colorado Food Banks Are Strained Ahead of Holidays

Thanksgiving festivities are fast approaching, and the name of the game this year is affordability. Everyone, from King Soopers to the Trump Administration, is touting just how much Americans can save on their annual fall feast. 

“The economy’s bad right now,” said Donna Cassano, a retired nurse who was collecting food for herself and her son at the Food Bank of the Rockies’ mobile food pantry in Lakewood on Wednesday morning. “The price of food, the price of buying clothes, getting him shoes, just surviving … I just wrecked my car. It’s an old car, and the price of cars today? To finance it, I’m like, ‘I can’t afford that right now.’”

Cassano is retired and fully supports her son, who is mentally disabled and unable to work. She started coming to the mobile pantry last year when grocery prices became too much to shoulder on her retirement check and her son’s disability benefits.

“It’s not enough,” she said. “That’s why I come to the food bank. These people are wonderful, and it really helps tremendously.”

The past few months have been a rollercoaster for everyone in the orbit of Colorado’s emergency food system, participants and suppliers alike. First came the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, which slashed a combined trillion dollars in funding for SNAP and Medicaid. Then the government shut down for a record 43 days, leaving many of the 54,300 federal workers in Colorado furloughed and temporarily without a paycheck. 

If that wasn’t enough, the Trump administration announced it would be freezing all SNAP payments on Nov. 1, launching a weeks-long legal debacle over whether and when the 42 million Americans on SNAP could receive benefits in November. 

“The SNAP disruption completely changed everything,” said FBR Chief Impact Officer Monica Buhlig. “We saw what would happen if the safety net were no longer there. We have an incredible team and there’s an incredible community of hunger relief partners who all lean in to support neighbors, and that’s hard, because there was not enough to meet the gap that existed.”

A building crisis

Buhlig emphasized that, while the most recent SNAP freezes exposed the emergency food system’s dependence on federal resources, these changes were squeezing Coloradans long before the government shutdown.

“Because with SNAP and Medicaid eligibility changing, the safety net is a little weaker, which puts more on us, and we should be the safety net to the safety net,” Buhlig said. “Families are making the decision as to how to put food on their tables and how to get the medical care they need, and both of those cost money and present barriers to one another, with both of those safety nets being a little bit more expensive.”

In addition to the $900 billion in Medicaid cuts and $120 billion in SNAP cuts, tighter eligibility requirements for both programs are expected to kick out a significant number of Americans—10 million and 2.4 million, respectively—in the coming years. All of this comes on the heels of several years of food prices increasing faster than the rate of inflation, with 2022 seeing the highest food price hikes since 1979.

For Sara Nolasco, a mother of three who was picking up food for her husband and kids on Wednesday, the rise in prices was hard to miss. 

“It’s much higher than before. For example, with a hundred dollars, you could buy a little more, but now, that buys a lot less,” said Nolasco, who started coming to the food bank several months ago when the restaurant she had been working 50 hours a week at closed. “Now that I’m working much fewer hours and my job is harder, I’m trying to get food from different places to support my husband’s income.”

This was echoed by Cassano, who noted that, while her son is on Medicaid, they applied for SNAP several months ago but were told they didn’t qualify. 

“I would never think of coming to the food bank if I could go into Walmart…you go out to King Soopers or Walmart and you come out with two or three hundred dollars and you don’t even have a cart filled?” she said. “It’s crazy. And we’re not even talking meats.”

Having to do more, with less

Food banks across the country are also dealing with less supply than they’re used to, due in part to the Trump Administration’s decision to cut $500 million from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) in March. 

TEFAP provides high-nutrition foods to food banks across the U.S., including the dairy and produce boxes distributed by FBR on Wednesday. According to Buhlig, these cuts, which stopped TEFAP’s commodity funding branch and the program’s Local Food Purchasing Agreement, reduced FBR’s food stores by 7% overall, the equivalent of 14,000 meals a day. While they’ve managed to fill some of that gap with increased fundraising and community support, Buhlig said they still haven’t fully made up that loss.

“What we were able to do was to try to keep stable the amount of produce that we had available and protein that we had available, that kind of paralleled the LFPA. But the commodities, you know, those programs weren’t recouped,” Buhlig said. “It’s a matter of planning ahead, and we have to raise more money. As a nonprofit, when government doesn’t help, it then comes to community to help.”

In sum, food banks are facing greater need armed with fewer resources. And this dilemma extends beyond FBR—other Denver-based organizations like Mutual Aid Monday, a group working to provide food and community in solidarity with Denver residents experiencing homelessness, rely on food banks to furnish the backbone of their supply of dry grains and shelf-stable staples. 

“We’re impacted downstream by the impacts on them, depending on what they’re getting in,” said Kim Miller, who organizes food distribution and cooks hot meals for MAM. “If they need it for the general population that they’re serving with their regular distributions, we want to be careful about how much we’re taking to avoid them not having enough for their people.” 

Some good news: the community is stepping up. Miller and Buhlig agreed that the holiday season is a high time for donations; Miller noted that the seasonal boost typically doubles MAM’s monthly budget from $4,000 to about $8,000.

“Experience has shown us that it’s when people feel the cold, when you step outside and go, ‘Oh my god, it’s really freezing out here,’ that’s when people will really be more forthcoming with cash donations,” Miller said. “People step up.”

The increase in giving is matched by a rise in demand as families prepare for the holidays, and it’s high season all around for Colorado’s emergency food suppliers. Wednesday’s mobile pantry served 216 households, which FBR rep Joanna Wise said was 38% higher than usual.

“Overall, if you take a look at the three branches of demand, supply, as well as support, the holiday season is when we tend to see that tick upwards for all three of those,” Wise said. “There are more people who are wanting to be able to buy food for those special holidays, and there are just a lot of different occasions that are happening and so it’s one of the ways they’re able to supplement their grocery bill.”

And, of course, politics

After the chaos of the past few months, these organizations can certainly use the extra hand. The political landscape wasn’t lost on Wednesday’s participants, either—the administration’s handling of SNAP, Medicaid and inflation was very unpopular in the line for food pick-up.

“It’s terrible, because for many people…” Nolasco trailed off. “I don’t have any government assistance, so for me it’s a little hard, but I imagine for others who are receiving government help, it’s even more difficult. To me, it seems like a really bad situation.”

Even Cassano, who said she was a Trump supporter, wasn’t happy. “He’s got to lower these prices. I mean, we’re supposed to be an abundant nation and prosperous, and then you go on retirement and you gotta come to a food bank?” she questioned. “Something’s wrong with that.”

The drop in federal dollars and bleak political outlook have also spurred more community engagement for both FBR and MAM. For Buhlig, seeing the cooperation between non-governmental organizations in the absence of federal support has been a “light at the end of the tunnel.” MAM, too, has seen a significant bump in engagement. 

“Since the election of the second Trump administration, there’s been an outpouring (of support),” Miller said. “People wanting to channel their political grief and anger into something constructive and concrete and pragmatic and making a difference on the ground for people that are most in need.”