‘It’s been really intense’: Food pantry continues to step up for the community

The last few months of 2025 have been very eventful, to say the least, at the Rhinelander Area Food Pantry. On Nov. 25, the pantry announced it has received a new refrigerated trunk thanks to a grant from Walmart and Feeding American Eastern Wisconsin. The acquisition of a new truck comes in the wake of an especially stressful time for those who are devoted to ensuring everyone in this part of the Northwoods has enough to eat. The 43-day government shutdown, which ended on Nov. 12, brought additional customers to the pantry’s door, executive director Courtney Smith told Gov. Tony Evers during a Nov. 17 visit.
“To be quite honest, it’s been really intense with the delay in SNAP payment and the shutdown of the federal government,” Smith said. “We’ve really seen an increase. Of course, our new households increase quadrupled in numbers in just three weeks.”
Smith said many families who hadn’t visited in years returned for help, and the emotional toll on clients was evident.
“We normally don’t have folks crying. Here we have folks who cry tears of relief, and you’ve had people really crying and at the place of fear,” she shated. “So it’s been, we’ve been all hands on deck. Our site managers, our volunteers. We’ve all been really taking good care of our customers.”
The pantry reached its highest single-day traffic on the last Wednesday of October “when everything was on fire,” Smith said, referring to the uncertainty surrounding benefit payments.

The community response was immediate and overwhelming. Smith said residents walked through the door asking what the pantry needed and how they could help.
“I think in the first 10 days of November, we brought in like 3,200 pounds,” she said during the tour. “So, I mean, that’s just insane. So we, yeah, you should have seen this a couple weeks ago. We were like overflowing gaylords of canned goods. I mean, it was the best, best problem to have.”
The pantry, which has operated in its current building since 2015, serves about 1,550 households biweekly and brought in 1 million pounds of food last year. Most of that comes through food recovery partnerships with local retailers like Walmart and Trig’s, with Smith noting Walmart alone has donated more than 200,000 pounds this year.
“What’s new for us, and I wanted to really share this, is we’re serving more children than we’ve ever served,” Smith told Evers.
Unlike its pre-pandemic operations when it served about 785 households annually, the pantry saw a dramatic surge in 2024 when it topped 1,000 households for the first time. That increase came after emergency SNAP allotments from the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
“We know that SNAP is first and foremost the most effective tool,” Smith said in a separate interview, noting there are about 3,441 SNAP recipients in Oneida County while the pantry serves roughly 2,200 individuals. “SNAP is powerful enough to keep potentially about 1,200 people from needing to shop at the food pantry.”
During a brief media availability after the tour, Evers acknowledged the “struggle” facing food pantries statewide, not just in urban areas like Milwaukee.
“Connecting the dots is important — healthcare, transportation, affordable housing, food,” Evers said. “They all impact each other, and we just have to be aware of that and plan accordingly.”
When asked about potential changes to the Affordable Care Act that could increase healthcare costs for some residents, Evers expressed concern about the ripple effects.
“If that becomes a thing and they have to spend more — double in some cases — that means their ability to feed themselves is going to be impacted too,” he said.
The pantry operates with just two paid staff — Smith as the sole full-time employee and one part-time pantry coordinator — while relying on about 150 to 175 volunteers monthly. Fifteen different community groups rotate through to help with distribution during the pantry’s three weekly shopping days.
Smith said the volunteer response during the crisis matched the community’s generosity. The pantry had been down about 30% in individual donations earlier this year but made up much of that shortfall in the first 10 days of November.
“Our food pantry exists because our community wants to meet need,” Smith said. “We’re funded by our community. They staff it, they shop it.”
The pantry receives no state or federal funding for operations, instead relying on fundraising, grants and donations. It does participate in the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, receiving USDA commodity orders monthly, though that now represents less than 8% of food brought in, down from 12% earlier this year.
Smith said the pantry has recently revamped its children’s nutrition programs, moving away from weekend backpack programs to monthly meal bags that include regular, full-size groceries rather than processed single-serve items. The program now serves 250 children monthly with no income eligibility requirements.
Looking ahead, Smith acknowledged uncertainty about future federal programs but said the pantry is prepared.
“The best thing that we can do is to do what we do best. We are frugal, we are good stewards of the money that we receive,” she said. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years, and we would like to work ourselves out of a job, but we will do it for another 20.”