Rhinelander Area Food Pantry is more than halfway to its fundraising goal for moving to a new location. St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Rhinelander has donated $25,000 to help the food pantry buy a new building.
Rhinelander Area Food Pantry Executive Director Guy Hansen says it’s the capitol campaign’s largest donation so far.
“We have had two or three major donations. But mostly they’re donations of anywhere from one hundred to a thousand dollars typically.”
The food pantry plans to relocate to what is now the Golden Harvest grocery building in the spring. Hansen says the pantry’s current building is just too small to house the 50,000 pounds of food it moves each month.
“It’s gonna be much easier for us to handle the food, it’ll all be one level. Where we are now, the food pantry is upstairs but all of our storage and our receiving and food sorting is downstairs. So we’re constantly going up and down and up and down.”
Golden Harvest is set to begin construction on its new building next month. The Rhinelander Area Food Pantry will wait until the new store opens to take occupancy of the building.
Hansen says the deal has been in the works since late summer.
