GASSAWAY, W.Va. –Mountaineer Food Bank has expanded its efforts to strengthen West Virginia’s largest emergency food provider, advance food security across the state, and improve its ability to respond more quickly to disasters.
In West Virginia, one in six families are food insecure and do not know where their next meal will come from.
Food bank officials were joined by state lawmakers and community leaders, including representatives for U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice, on Thursday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their headquarters in Gassaway to unveil a new and expanded warehouse.
The expansion added 864,000 cubic feet of space, including 50,000 cubic feet of frozen storage and 40,000 cubic feet of refrigerated storage. The food bank is West Virginia’s largest emergency food provider, serving families, children, seniors, veterans, and individuals at risk of hunger.
Mountaineer Food Bank CEO Chad Morrison said a great deal of time and energy went into the expansion, and he is excited about what the food bank will be able to accomplish moving forward.
“It is so great to see what this facility is going to do for the organization and for our neighbors throughout West Virginia, this is going to make a difference,” Morrison said at the event. “A real difference and allow us to feed so many more people the fresh healthy foods they need.”
The expansion will allow the food bank to deliver food more quickly to more than 460 partners across 48 counties.
A capital campaign for the expansion raised more than $12 million, with fundraising efforts ongoing to reach a $15 million goal.
Mountaineer Food Bank Board President Chad Prather said the board is thrilled to see the project finally come to fruition.
“This has been a long time coming, it’s a strategy we’ve been thinking about and talking about for many, many years, it started to take on a little more steam just after the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 and then really full force a couple of years later and here we are today (Thursday), just an extremely exciting day,” Prather said.
Inventory Clerk Amanda Hoover of the Mountaineer Food Bank was also excited at Thursday’s event.
She said the expansion will allow her to purchase truckloads of food and store them at the facility.
“I can buy truckloads of food, and get them in and not worry about them being stuck in a truck outside and that truck breaking down, something happen to that product, it’s a lot of security, it’s being able to get the food in here, and knowing that we’ll get it in and we can get it right back out to the people that need it,” Hoover said.
She said her favorite part of the expansion is the new freezer and cooler space, which is larger than what the facility had before.
During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, it was announced that Morgan & Morgan donated $2 million toward the expansion. The food bank also announced that, in recognition of the donation, its expanded campus in Gassaway will be renamed the “Morgan & Morgan Center for Ending Hunger.”
Morgan & Morgan Co-Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Rabinowitz said the donation represents more than corporate philanthropy for the company.
He said Morgan & Morgan founder John Morgan grew up outside Lexington, Kentucky, and understood what it was like to experience food insecurity.
“We truly believe that no child, no family should be denied access to fresh foods,” Rabinowitz said. “To have the ability to give back in such a meaningful way, it’s so important to our firm, so important to the Morgan Family, that this opportunity we feel blessed to be a part of.”
He said they knew they wanted to partner with the Mountaineer Food Bank because of its statewide reach and ability to feed a large number of people across West Virginia.
“We knew that this is who we needed to partner with to help expand their reach, and so when the opportunity presented itself we knew we wanted to go with the best, and so we feel so privileged to partner with the Mountaineer Food Bank, to stand alongside this expansion and to help them grow to reach more people,” he said.
Morgan & Morgan also helped design a new truck wrap for four of the food bank’s semi-trucks, which will deliver food to pantries and partner agencies across the state.
Morrison said that now that the facility is complete, the focus will be on ensuring the food bank has enough food for the people it serves.
“We got to make sure the food is on the plate, and that’s about bringing the food into West Virginia, pulling it from West Virginia, from local farms and donors from the state, and beyond, that’s the next big thing for us is making sure we have the food to get it out to West Virginia and the programming that we’re offering is well supported,” he said.