Thriving off its connections, the Pittsburgh food bank is the largest supplier of meals to Butler County families
DUQUESNE, Allegheny County — When the government shutdown affected federal aid programs throughout the U.S. in early 2026, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank brought 100% more food to some of its Butler County distributions compared to their average giveaways.
The shutdown also affected the food bank’s food sourcing, with programs like the U.S. Department of Agriculture pausing its purchasing of food to give to food banks, leaving the food bank to buy using its other funding pools.
However, the food bank — the largest in the 11 county region it serves — had a litany of volunteers and organizations that not only moved thousands of pounds of food at distributions, but kept their partner agencies open as well.
“The more we source from our immediate community and our immediate region, the more resilience we'll have to those kinds of supply chain disruptions,” said Josh Murphy, director of supply chain strategy at the food bank. “A lot of our farms are... up in Butler County.”
Rachel Martone, distribution supervisor at Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, said the sheer scale of the food bank helps keep these national jams from becoming detrimental to the people and organizations it serves.
The food bank’s network of partners stepped up to fill the need, according to Martone.
“Because especially at the large distributions, we can bring easily 50,000 pounds of food. I myself cannot put 50,000 pounds of food into cars. That's why we need those volunteers,” Martone said.
“They're also very flexible and we have great sourcing relationships. So when the SNAP paused, the government shutdown happened, we were able to increase — I mean some of the distributions, we were bringing 100% more food and it was incredible.”
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank has 27 food distributions in its 11 county area each month, three of which are in Butler County. The food bank also has 25 partner agencies in the county, which are responsible for getting out 80% of the millions of pounds of food it provides each year. These partners are agencies like the Lighthouse Foundation, the Center for Community Resources and Network of Hope, which each supplying food provided by the food bank to people who live nearby.
With the impact the partners have in getting food from the bank to people, Gretchen McCormick, network growth and compliance coordinator for the food bank, said they are important to support.
“We truly cannot do the work that we do every day at the food bank without partners like them,” McCormick said. “So we just want to make sure we have all those resources where they need them and when they need them.”
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank distributes more than 3.5 million pounds of food in Butler County each year, serving more than 18,600 individuals through its distributions and through partners in the county.
Food distributions take place once per month at the Butler City Farmers Market, Lernerville Speedway in Buffalo Township and Six Points Church of God of Prophecy in Allegheny Township. For these food distributions, the Greater Pittsburgh food bank brings food on a truck to a designated location and volunteers help unload boxes and give them to the line of people there to pick up food.
Martone said these distributions serve “150 to 200, up to 1,600 people at one event,” who each get about 12 to 13 items. The typical distribution provides two frozen meat items, seven to eight fresh produce items, milk, eggs and a nonperishable item, according to Martone.
The items are loaded onto the truck from the food bank’s headquarters in Duquesne, where food is stored, and also distributed, via the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank’s own pantry, which supplies food to visitors daily. The storage warehouse of the food bank resembles a department store, where shelves stretch nearly to the ceiling filled with cases of food. Freezers are basically long garages, contained by doors that roll upward leading to a hall flanked by full shelves on either side.
Despite its expanding storage space, Murphy said the food bank has been streamlining its operations to keep food from sitting for too long, fresher for distributions and to prevent potential waste. Since piloting an advance choice program in 2014, the food bank has cut down on food waste by letting its partners choose what produce they prefer to receive so the food bank can buy based on their requests. It has made a real difference on produce costs, Murphy said.
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank goes through up to 12 million pounds of food per year, sourced from about 450 retail and wholesale donors and about 60 farms in its service area. Murphy recalled a positive reaction when he pointed out to food pantry clients that the produce they were about to receive was grown just miles away.
“We end up landing highly desirable products grown in Pennsylvania that we get for pennies on the dollar compared for the wholesale resale cost of the same product,” Murphy said. “I used to go out to a distribution and say, 'See all these bins of cabbage over here? They were grown 50 miles from here,' and people actually cheer. People are so excited to be that connected to their food, to the production of their food.”
The food bank saw a nearly 12% increase in households served in Butler County from July 1, 2025, to May 31 of this year, compared to the same period the prior year. Partners continue to be the main outlet of the food bank’s supply and while they may feel the strain from the need, the food bank has grants that can help them offset their costs.
According to McCormick, an agency needs to be a nonprofit organization to become a partner and they need to present an operating budget to the food bank. But the committee that reviews applications for partners takes into account other elements, like the manner in which they will distribute the food and its proximity to other partner agencies. McCormick said accessibility is a big factor in whether or not an agency becomes an approved partner.
“If it's already in an area that is saturated with food resources, it doesn't always make sense for us to pursue something like that. Now if it's in one of the parts of the county that are more rural, maybe doesn't have as many services offered, we look at things like that,” McCormick said.
The operating budget is important for a partner agency to provide because even though the food bank awards grants that help an agency pay for the food it gets, they are not always available. But McCormick said the food bank is supportive of and in constant contact with its partner agencies because of how much food they move in their communities.
Murhpy, too, said part of eliminating food insecurity is eliminating as many barriers as possible to food access, which extends to the partner agencies. He said the food industry is “very supportive of food banks,” but the food bank is funded by people who donate to the cause as much as it is by the government and by its clients.
“The vast majority of our funding comes from those $20 checks, those $100 checks,” Murphy said. “I don't think anybody, whether you know it or not, I don't think anybody has a sphere of people who've just never gotten service from a food bank.”
