Volunteers with Nebraska For Us stood outside a former Bellevue Public Library branch on Wednesday as cars rolled up with bags of food and toiletries to donate to a summer food drive.
Shortly after the drive started at 10 a.m., the table was filling up with boxes of cereal and jars of jam and boxes of toothpaste to be donated to the Bellevue Food Pantry.
The Bellevue Food Pantry bought the old library building from the city and began renovations on it last month. For years, the pantry has been housed in a 1,000-square-foot building just up the street. When it opens early next year, the pantry’s new home will be more than 20 times that size.
“It’ll be transitioned to a client choice pantry, which means families and individuals come in and shop for what they need – culturally, nutritionally, whatever that looks like,” said Jill Connor, the pantry’s deputy director. “And then in the green space over there that gets full sun, we are planning for a 16-bed community garden space so we can infuse fresh produce into the meals that people are receiving.”
The pantry’s expansion coincides with a steady increase in demand over recent years. In her nine years with the nonprofit, Connor said the number of people served has “skyrocketed.”
“We used to serve about 5,000 individuals per year, and now we’re at about 19,000,” she said. “Gradually, over the last five to seven years, that’s been a massive increase.”
Some of that increase can be attributed to broader awareness of the pantry’s services, Connor said. Rising prices and consistently high inflation rates also drive demand. And Angie Lauritsen, the director of Nebraska For Us, a nonprofit that hosted Wednesday’s food drive, said increased barriers to enrolling in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will drive up need further.
Data from Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services showed an 11% drop in SNAP participation between April 2025 and April 2026. Lauritsen said much of that drop can be attributed to changes to the SNAP program passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. That legislation barred refugees from obtaining SNAP benefits and instituted additional requirements for people to qualify for benefits.
“They’re increasing how people apply and the qualifications for them to apply, and because of that law, they’ve increased the barriers and the red tape,” Lauritsen said.
Bellevue’s pantry is also experiencing the increased demand that is typical in the summer months. With kids out of school, Connor said, families are on the hook for extra meals that are typically covered in the school year.
“This time of year we really start to ramp up, and we’re a lot busier all the way from now until the end of the year,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of grandparents come through that haven’t had grandkids in their household all year, and they’re on fixed incomes, and that influx of individuals in their household really presents a hardship for them.”
Connor said the pantry is always looking for non-perishable pantry staples, like peanut butter and jelly and canned protein. But she also said a key need is fresh produce and leftover seeds that can be distributed to families or planted in the garden beds outside of the future pantry site.
“Towards the end of the growing season, if anybody has an abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes, or any of those things – we will definitely take any sort of fresh produce,” Connor said.