Faced with a historical rise in the need for its services, late in 2023, the Bar Harbor Food Pantry board set out to find a new home that would allow the Pantry to meet the needs of our community members facing food insecurity. Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of three MDI residents who supplied almost half the total project cost and the unwavering support of our community, we secured two 3-year bridge loans and purchased the former Mama DiMatteo’s building in downtown Bar Harbor.

Response from the majority of our community has been overwhelmingly positive. Still, many have had questions about why we need to move.

The number of your neighbors that need our help has grown so fast in the last two years that we find ourselves unable to help everyone in our current location. We have gone from seeing 20-35 people a day in 2022 to 48-101 people per day in 2024. The long and short of it, our home of 25 years is too small.

The total goal for the campaign is $2.5 million. This includes paying off the bridge loans and their associated interest, renovations of the facility, equipment purchases, a temporary employee, and our entire 2024 operations.

“Every week we are meeting new families, seeing new faces and hearing new stories and every week we are breaking the record of weekly visits to the pantry. Serving over 300 people in just 16 hours a week when we can only squeeze four on the floor at a time is a challenge. Keeping the shelves stocked with enough inventory to provide a consistent experience for everyone is a challenge. Planning our orders every week can be stressful because we hate the idea of running out or not having what people need. We're doing our best to meet these difficulties but have had to cut back on a few things due to lack of space. Once 34 Kennebec Place is renovated into our new pantry, we'll be able to serve our customers more efficiently and focus more on addressing the greater challenge of building food security for everyone.”

-Phoebe Denvir, Program Director BHFP

The simple fact is that our pantry cannot handle the volume we are seeing. Our home of the past 25 years lacks the space and capacity to process, store, and distribute enough food to meet the needs of so many people. We lack enough cold storage to store what we need between delivery times. The same goes for dry storage. Additionally, the lack of space increases our food costs in the long run because we cannot take full advantage of free and reduced-cost items available to us through the Good Shepherd Food Bank and it increases our labor costs due to constant restocking from a lack of shelf space. 

And on top of all that, every item we receive from Good Shepherd has to come into the Pantry through a window. Last year that was almost 80,000 lbs. Don’t believe us? Watch this video.

Our new home at 34 Kennebec Place has 150% more usable space than our current home. Building off the current restaurant layout with a front and back of house, we have designed a food pantry that will not only meet our current needs, but will allow us to further build food security in the greater MDI community.

Ample shopping spaces will allow our customers to shop for the food they need to thrive with dignity, while reducing the need to restock constantly. Office space will afford us the ability to have private customer interactions. Ample storage will allow us to take advantage of free and below market items from Good Shepherd. A large prep area with a demonstration kitchen will allow us to process the summer harvest and teach customers simple ways to extend their food budget.

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn about the Pantry and our relocation campaign.

The board, staff, and volunteers of the Bar Harbor Food Pantry hope that you will help us build food security to strengthen our community by donating to our relocation campaign.

Please click below to make a commitment or donate