GREEN BAY, WI – (WGBW & WISS) – In 1984, one of Green Bay’s civic and philanthropic leaders, Leo Frigo founded Paul’s Pantry, one of the largest food pantry programs in the nation. Today, Paul’s Pantry fights food insecurity in the greater Green Bay Area by providing food and services to over 1200 households every week.
Bon Hornacek is the Assistant Executive Director of Paul’s Pantry. He said the humble beginnings of the pantry lend to the legend of its founder.
“It literally started with Leo (Frigo) going into dumpsters at grocery stores!” said Hornacek. “I always thought that was an old wive’s tail. I thought, ‘Oh, sure!.’ Until, I had a friend of mine come down to the pantry. I was going to give him a tour. He says, ‘Oh, No. No. I know all about the place. I used to live next door to the Frigos, and those stories are true!’ And he said, ‘It wasn’t just Leo. I was the smallest kid in the neighborhood,’ he said. ‘So, Leo always brought me along because it was easier to pull me out of the dumpster.’”
Hornacek said now, Paul’s Pantry works with businesses and organization to fill the shelves.
“We work with all kinds of places – grocery stores, convenience stores, food manufacturers – all kinds of places to take their unsaleable products,” Honracek said. “Not necessarily expired meats or something. Because there might be a safety concern with something like that. But when you’re talking about cans of green beans– that expiration date…”
Helping families stretch their food dollars and provide relief to a tight household budget has always been the aim of Paul’s Pantry.
“That was really Leo’s idea was to try to help supplement families so you can, they can free up some of the dollars in there and their monthly budget to spend on the other things that they need. So that they didn’t have to spend it on food. So that’s our goal. And that’s one of the reasons we’re as large as we are.
Again, we’re the, we’re the largest food pantry in the entire state. We’re one of the largest food pantries in the country because the model here is different. We’re a grocery store, and our goal is to give people as much food as we possibly can–to make it easy. You know, we don’t want people to have to run to five or six food pantries to get enough food.
Just like, I don’t know where you grocery shop, when I go grocery shopping, my wife and I go to two places usually. We don’t go to six or seven grocery stores. It’s inconvenient. We don’t want people in need to have to travel to different places to get what they need. We want it to be one-stop shopping as best we can.
That’s why the average shopper leaves Paul’s Pantry with like 80 to 100 pounds of food each week,” Hornacek said.
The need isn’t waning, said Hornacek. For the past two years, starting in 2021, Paul’s Pantry has been the busiest it has ever been.
“We are the busiest we’ve ever been in 40 years. And that’s been going on for two years,” said Hornacek.
In 2023, Hornacek said Paul’s Pantry served a record 50 thousand households with food and services. With a fiscal year that goes from October to September of each year. He said through 10 months of fiscal year 2024 they already had served 51 thousand households.
Honacek says there has always been and will always be a portion of the community that struggles with food insecurity. He said we are now seeing the true effect the pandemic had on the economy and hunger in the region.
“There is just a massive amount of people who are just struggling. There is always a segment of our population who is struggling. But right now we’ve seen kind of the real impact of the pandemic. For a while, there were so many government programs that came in. There was so much emergency food share flooded into the system. And as that went away, we started to see some of the real impacts that had been masked by some of those government programs.
“We also see inflation. Everything costs. And so a lot of people who may have been getting by before aren’t able to get by,” Hornacek said.
Hornacek adds that the increases in housing costs and rent are also affecting the pocketbook and causing food insecurity in Northeast Wisconsin. He added that the people affected by hunger look just like you and I.
“The people we see at Paul’s Pantry – They come from all walks of life. There’s no one picture of what poverty looks like,” Hornacek said.
Paul’s Pantry has observed three main segments of the population that need their services:
Paul’s Pantry is at 1520 Leo Frigo Drive in Green Bay. For information on how to volunteer, donate, or use the services, visit Paulspantry.org.
“The three things Paul’s Pantry relies on the most are: Food, Funds, and Volunteers,” Hornacek said. “It’s really a three-legged stool. And we can’t do what we do without those three.”
