ABILENE, Texas - The West Central Texas Food Bank is undergoing major construction at its Abilene facility, a project leaders say is critical to keeping up with the region’s growing demand for food assistance.
For 43 years, the food bank has served as the primary distribution hub for emergency food aid across 13 counties. Director of Operations Patrick Dembach says that scale requires constant adaptation and long-term expansion planning.
“The food bank that’s been in this location for approximately 43 years serves 13 counties surrounding Abilene,” Dembach said. “Basically stretching along I-20 from Mitchell County in the west to Eastland and Comanche County in the east and southeast.”
When the new facility opens in 2026, Dembach says it will allow the food bank to support families at an even higher level of need.
Across the Big Country, food insecurity forces thousands of households into difficult tradeoffs. And the challenges aren’t just volume; they are geographic. Long distances in rural counties make logistics and consistency essential. That’s why the bank focuses on familiar, manageable foods that families can easily prepare at home.
“When you stick to something more recognized like green beans, potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbages, things that people know how to prepare, that’s what we’ve focused on,” Dembach said.
On Tuesday in Abilene, cars lined up outside Presbyterian Food Pantry, one of a dozen local pantries supported through the food bank’s network. For many families, these distributions are the difference between making meals or going without.
Leah Woods was among those waiting, saying she was working to get off public benefits when she unexpectedly lost her job.
“I recently lost my job,” Woods said. “I’m trying to level my life up…so I’m having to come through here to get food.”
More than 3.5 million Texans receive SNAP benefits. Those funds are spent at retail grocery stores, but emergency food banks exist to cover the gap when those benefits run thin or run out. The food bank programs, including USDA’s emergency food assistance program (TFAP), are built for crisis moments rather than long-term monthly coverage.
“All these programs are meant to be supplemental,” Dembach said. “Not filling the entire household for a month. You have to find as many resources as you possibly can to fill the gap.”
Summer Menchaca, Director of Programs for the Food Bank, says their mobile food pantries across the service area serve about 1,600 families each month. For many households on fixed incomes, even modest help from a pantry can stabilize a budget. But some recipients say benefit amounts have dropped so low that families are struggling to keep up with basic food needs.
Margaret Walker waited at the pantry with her friend Danny LaMond, explaining that her granddaughter recently lost $700 in SNAP support for her family. Meanwhile, LaMond says he gets just $85 a month.
“That’s one or two trips to the store,” Walker said. “Some people get $20, some get $85, some get up to $2,000. But a lot of people are just trying to make a little bit stretch.”
LaMond says the pantry makes a direct difference for him, especially heading into Thanksgiving when he is hoping to bring home a frozen turkey.
“It just helps,” LaMond said. “When you’re on a fixed income, this helps.”
As the holiday season approaches, the financial pressure is building. Higher grocery costs, rising gasoline prices, and increased utility expenses are all pushing households closer to emergency need and forcing food assistance programs to serve more people at once.
Dembach says public support is critical to meet that surge.
“With what’s going on around you with the government, the holidays, price increases at the retail level, to help your neighbors support your local food bank,” he said. “It can be through volunteerism, monetary support, or products themselves.”
Menchaca says the goal is not just relief, but protection from hunger at scale.
“We want to ensure that not one person in our community goes hungry,” she said.
As federal leaders debate whether emergency funding should be released during the ongoing government shutdown, food continues to move out the door every week in West Central Texas, hundreds of thousands of pounds distributed through a system now preparing to expand for the future.
Because here, food assistance is more than charity. It is infrastructure—an economic support structure that keeps families afloat, county by county, one distribution at a time.