Clarkson University’s CU Pantry is getting a boost thanks to a new partnership with the Food Bank of Central New York.
Karen Belcher, the Executive Director of the Food Bank of Central New York, traveled to campus on Thursday to speak with members of the team that maintain the CU Pantry, which was started in 2021 as an Honors Program project and has lived on under the Office of the Dean of Students ever since.
Belcher met with Johannes Richter ‘27, the Student Manager of CU Pantry, and Carly LaBow ‘25, Impact Coordinator for CU Pantry, as well as Dean of Students Kelsey Pearson and Assistant to the Dean of Students Jody Nicholas. In talking about the new partnership between the organizations, plans for a new project to bring more convenience to food access was a central topic.
Clarkson’s CU Pantry is on track to become the first private university in the service area of the Food Bank of Central New York to use a new system of temperature-controlled lockers that can store food and allow users to pick it up at their convenience.
“Those students have crazy schedules. They are also typically working on top of their class schedule, so when they have the time to go in and get that food is really up in the air and it changes constantly,” Richter said. “The idea with the locker system is we can pack the orders, they can select the day they want to pick up on, we can send them a passcode they can access the lockers with, and they can pick up at any time of the day. Once the order is in there, they will get a notification that their order is ready. The real impact is convenience for these students, but location is a really big part of this too.”
“It’s the right food, at the right time, in the right amount, in the right place. How do we meet people where they are at? That is the critical piece, if we are trying to reduce barriers,” Belcher said. “This is a great way to do it.”
Richter’s previous relationship with the Food Bank of Central New York was the catalyst for the new partnership. While a high school student at Potsdam, Richter co-founded the P2 Food Market, which also partnered with the Food Bank. He said partnering with the Food Bank of Central New York will make the CU Pantry more stable.
“We can get a more consistent product, we can purchase in bulk so it will save us money, and we can also provide more for our students” he said.
