KENTWOOD, Mich. — Feeding America West Michigan strives to end hunger throughout the west side and Upper Peninsula. In their efforts, they've only seen the need grow. So, they're growing too.
Feeding America West Michigan plans to expand, re-locating to a much larger warehouse in Kentwood, since they are now capped in the ways they can serve.
Ken Estelle, CEO and President of Feeding America West Michigan, said, “We're just limited in how many mobile food distribution trucks we can put together in one space. This will open that up significantly.”
Feeding America West Michigan provides roughly 23 million meals a year, which is only set to increase thanks to their $13 million renovation. “We’ve invested a lot in being able to handle more and more frozen and refrigerated food in order to make sure that those families are getting nutritious food," Estelle said.
The new space will provide a much larger footprint in distributing more food to more people, along with improving programs like Gather to Grow, which provides free meals to children at participating local libraries.
Estelle said, “We’ve seen that increase, just in the last year, nearly 70% in terms of the number of kids and number of meals that we're supporting.”
Estelle explained that Feeding America West Michigan is committed to rescuing as much food as they can from the food industry, keeping it out of the landfills.
“The meaningful thing for me is, how do we make sure that this additional space benefits our community in a meaningful way,” Estelle said.
Feeding America West Michigan plans to officially open their new location in November of 2024, but operations plan to begin at the Kentwood location in January of 2025.
For more information, click here.
Follow FOX 17: Facebook - X (formerly Twitter) - Instagram - YouTube
