‘Frightening’: Utah food banks scramble to meet highest-ever demand as families ‘bombarded’ by rising costs

Brandy Campbell has been fighting cancer since 2020.

In and out of work because of treatments and surgeries, her battle brought her to Calvary Salt Lake’s food pantry on a chilly Thursday earlier this month. Campbell and her sidekick, Boujee, a miniature Australian Shepherd, were joined by hundreds of others inching along in the Murray church’s car line.

“The cost of groceries is so expensive,” Campbell said. “It frees up some funds for my doctor bills and household needs. … In the last six months, [grocery costs have] only gotten worse.”

More Utahns are seeking food assistance now than they ever have. It’s a “frightening” time for food banks and pantries across the state, where pandemic demand never died down and now inflation, the threat of tariffs and impending federal layoffs have exacerbated the situation, Utah Food Bank CEO Ginette Bott said.

“We always have the issues with affordable housing, with affordable day care, with transportation,” Bott said. “I mean, families are just being bombarded with increases of all the things that are needed to keep their family safe, healthy and in home.”

Demand has more than doubled in some spots

The Utah Food Bank serves as a broker to local food pantries, getting goods to over 270 pantries throughout the state. Pantries then distribute the food to individuals in need, typically asking for the family’s name, the number of individuals in the household and how many children are in that family.

Between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021, the Utah Food Bank distributed 66.5 million pounds of food across the state, a spokesperson said. Between March 1, 2024, and March 1, 2025, the food bank distributed about 72 million pounds of food.

One food pantry in Spanish Fork has experienced a 65% increase in demand this year compared to this time in 2024, Bott said, and she’s heard another large food bank has seen demand quadruple.

The Utah Food Bank is now planning for an even worse landscape statewide.

“Produce coming from Mexico into the states, is that going to discontinue?” Bott said of tariffs. “If so, well, then let’s look at produce in California. What’s the situation with California? Have they had too much rain? Have they had wildfires?”

“So for us, we’re constantly looking at the variables that impact the items that we’re trying to get,” she said, “and sometimes we just have to say to pantries, ‘We don’t have those items.’”

The Utah Food Bank is a part of Feeding America, a network of about 200 food banks across the country.

Feeding America has a government relations program in Washington, D.C., and Bott said they’re working with that team to understand how federal actions will impact the local need for food and where it can be sourced.

“They kind of lead the charge for all of us, and we’re not out here by ourselves trying to reinvent the wheel,” Bott said. “And so right now, all 200 of us are looking at, ‘OK, how do we try to come together for budgets for next year? What does that mean? What kind of a strategic plan do we put together to have a realistic business model that we can use to keep us on track?’”

But with potential cuts to federal food security programs like SNAP and other economic factors still in flux, it’s been hard for food banks to plan.

“I think the next four years are going to be maybe even more alarming than the last four,” she said.

What demand looks like on the ground

In Salt Lake City, a line begins to form outside the Alex & Sally Lebwohl Food Pantry at Jewish Family Services about an hour before distribution even begins, executive director Melissa Zimmerman said.

The pantry has seen a 200% increase in demand since last February, Zimmerman said. It’s open every weekday, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays.

Last summer, they served about 3,200 individuals each month — but this January, that number spiked to nearly 4,200 people. And in February, the pantry served 3,602 individuals — making those the two busiest months on record since the pantry opened in 2015, Zimmerman added.

Calvary Salt Lake, a chapel located just off Interstate 15 in Murray, has also seen more demand at its pantry, called Utah Food for Families. There, four semitrucks deliver 25,000 pounds of food each week for distribution, which takes place every Thursday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Ran as efficiently as a Chick-fil-A drive through, the pantry serves roughly 900 cars during the four-hour period, with a line snaking through their parking lot, accumulating along 4500 South and 500 West and sometimes backing up near the I-15 exit at 4500 South.

Arriving cars can also choose to go through the chapel’s prayer lane, where a church member is available to talk through any struggles that families may be facing, pastor Hudson Smith said while directing traffic during distribution on March 6.

The pantry is open to people of all faiths, Smith clarified, and no one is turned away because of what they believe. To some, though, the offer is helpful.

“We’ve had people who have family who have passed; we have people who’ve lost their jobs, and they knew about us, and they’re like, ‘You guys are the only thing keeping food on our table, feeding our kids,’” Smith said.

Smith has learned a few dozen words of Spanish to make sure he can still offer support to those who don’t speak English, he added.

“I get to talk to them, I know their names, and for me, it’s a highlight of my week,” Smith said. “… We’re not just here for a paycheck. We’re not just here to make ourselves feel good. We’re here because we love people, because Jesus told us to, and that’s what we’re doing.”

How you can help

At a Utah Food Bank warehouse, Gov. Spencer Cox on March 12 urged Utahns to donate food during the Utah Food Bank’s Feed Utah food drive, which took place March 15.

The Utah Food Bank still accepts donated goods at warehouses across the state, including its Salt Lake City location on 3150 S. 900 West. There are drop-off locations in South Jordan, Springville, St. George and Blanding, too, and Harmons Grocery stores across the state accept donations.

You can also sign up to deliver food or sort through donations by filling out a form on the food bank’s website.

Cox acknowledged that the cost of living is high across the country, and he said the state Legislature just passed “several bills” that he is reviewing to lower the cost of living in Utah — including HB100, which would expand free school lunches for more Utah kids.

“The price of housing is a big part of that,” Cox said. “It’s one of the reasons I’m so adamant that we have to continue to build more housing to get the pricing down, because it really is influencing people in our state.”

He explained that if your rent or home price goes up 20%, that takes a slice out of your food budget.

“We want to make sure that food is not optional, that it’s provided for everyone,” he said.