WOODRIDGE, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- It’s a fresh start for the West Suburban Community Pantry.
The Woodridge pantry held a grand reopening Wednesday morning to welcome shoppers back into the building and celebrate the completion of a yearlong renovation.
“We've been doing mostly curbside pickup and during that time we took advantage of the fact that the inside of our facility wasn’t being shopped and we have renovated the facility to increase our capacity to serve the community,” said Laura Coyle, Executive Director of the West Suburban Community Pantry.
At the start of the pandemic, the pantry went from serving about 300 families a week to more than 500 families a week.
“The need just skyrocketed, and really we just had to do everything completely different than the way we had done it before,” Coyle said.
The renovation project includes an expansion of the pantry store, online virtual pantry remote ordering, new client lobby and private intake offices, classroom, conference space, and an enlarged warehouse capacity.
The pantry store is now stocked with fresh, healthy produce thanks to a new partnership with the Naperville Amazon Fresh store.
“Grocery partners, specifically, are where we get a lot of our fresh produce, so to have a partner like Amazon Fresh that has such wonderful fresh food for the people we serve, it’s just incredible,” Coyle added.
Amazon Fresh delivered hundreds of food items to help those in need throughout Will and DuPage Counties.
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