Save The Children's Pantry

The Children’s Pantry was established in 2010 in Louisville Kentucky. Our mission was to prepare and deliver healthy hot meals to local child and adult care facilities. We source fresh ingredients, prepare nourishing meals and deliver to those centers daily. While some facilities only require lunch delivery, we also provide breakfast and afternoon snack to some. We prepare foods that accommodate special diet requirements, food allergies, and feeding and swallowing difficulties also. We work with all individual needs to ensure everyone receives a healthy meal and snacks. On average we send out 550 meals everyday to mostly low income child care centers and adult centers that mostly care for those who have dementia and are disabled.

To service most of our facilities, we are required to be on an approved caterers list. These facilities are on a government food program, CACFP, where they get reimbursed for a portion of their meals, but our company does not receive any funding from the State. We are paid directly by the facilities per daily meal provided. We are not a non-profit.

In 2020, when Covid shut down the business, we struggled. We were fortunate enough to keep our awesome employees, but we lost all income with childcare and adult care facilities closed. We came back within a few weeks of the shutdown and were able to prepare a week’s worth of meals for many adult individuals from our contracted facilities that were low-income and most at risk. These meals were delivered directly to their homes each Monday. Being able to continue to provide meals and help those from our facilities was a blessing.

While the struggles with our business shutting down were happening, we had to move our kitchen to a different location which, unfortunately, was more costly. The previous site had plumbing issues that would not get addressed and became a hazard for our kitchen. We had to move and be up and running quickly. We did it, but the cost has put us in a bind.

We are humbly asking for your help. During the past two years, we have accumulated debt. We wanted to keep our employees paid. We wanted to keep our children in their daycares fed. We wanted to keep our adults in the adult care facilities fed. Our business provides an essential service to those facilities caring for our most vulnerable. We have grown to love and care for many people in our facilities and wish to continue to care for them. We are struggling with rising costs of groceries, gas, rent, utilities, and closed facilities. We are still juggling debts to pay, which have accumulated over the past two years. Without help, we will not be able to continue our mission. We are working hard not to raise the cost of our service. Facilities cannot afford to pay much more than our current rate. We have tried to raise our rates very little at the risk of losing business, which we do not wish to do. We do not want to lose the facilities we have grown to have personal relationships with. We care deeply for those individuals we get to see daily.

Our community is the best, and we humbly ask for any help you can give. Our request here is our last effort to save everything we’ve worked so hard to build. We wish to continue providing meals for those who need them - our children and adult care facilities. We want our kids to have breakfast, lunch and snacks, and our adults to get the nourishment at lunch that is prepared to accommodate their needs. We are incredibly grateful for anything you can provide.

With Blessings,

The Children’s Pantry