Tiny Chuluota food pantry provides 1,000 critical meals and counting

A chorus of greetings from a dozen smiling volunteers ushered three small children inside the suite beside the Chuluota Grocery store, their mother trailing behind them.

“Go on and pick your chips,” one of the volunteers told them, helping the kids stuff grocery bags from boxes filled with potato chip varieties. Noticing how one of the children was unable to choose from the bin, a volunteer handed out a Frito-Lay variety mix box and told her she could take it home. 

Volunteers helped the mother of the family load her car with grocery bags filled with prepped meal kits, snacks and the children’s haul of potato chips, sending them off with a “see you next week”. 

And instead of being 11 miles and two towns away – the distance between Chuluota and the nearest county-run summer lunch program – it’s all right around the corner at the newly-established Chuluota Resource Center. 

A lifeboat in a food desert

Barbie and Denny Worswick began the food pantry with two small wooden cabinets bought off of Facebook Marketplace outside of the Chuluota Grocery store off of 7th Street in the summer of 2023. When a space beside the grocery store opened for rent in March, a door opened for the Worswicks to expand their operation. 

Now with a 700-square-foot location, the food pantry has become the Chuluota Resource Center.

The cabinet is still posted outside of the Resource Center, making items accessible to those who can’t make the Center’s hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.). It’s filled with non-perishable goods and is replenished on a daily basis. The new space has allowed them to stock the refill food and to keep perishable items. 

The source of the Center’s supplies: the very neighborhood it serves.

“The most incredible thing about our pantry is that it’s people in our community who can afford to get food are donating so the people who can’t afford it can get help, which is just absolutely beautiful,” Barbie said. 

One of the community’s regular donors to the food pantry and the Resource Center is Donna Hatch.

Hatch’s relationship with the team at the Resource Center dates back to the wooden pantry days, when Hatch and her family’s business DynaFire donated a truckload of bikes for a local Christmas giveaway Barbie was hosting. 

“I try to go at least twice a month,” Hatch said. “More recently it’s been to support the summer lunch program, but continually throughout the year it’s whatever they’re working on at the time, whether it be just meals for the pantry, back-to-school supplies, whatever it is.”

Barbie believes this outpost operates uniquely compared to other charity organizations. 

“Most pantries you have to apply before you can even take food. They want to know your income, just to qualify, just to make sure you’re needy enough to need it,” Barbie said. “I think if you come in to here, if you’re willing to do that, we’re not going to say no, we’re not going to question it. We don’t judge people.”

A call to action

The first large operation from the newly opened Chuluota Resource Center: providing children in the neighborhood with breakfast and lunch throughout the summer. 

Seminole County Public Schools’ Red Apple Dining program announced in May that it has continued its partnership with Summer BreakSpot this year to provide all children, 18 years old or younger, breakfast and lunch starting June 2. 

The issue for Chuluota families, however, was that the nearest school site at the beginning of this program was Oviedo High School, which is 6.4 miles away from the Chuluota Resource Center. 

“That’s a long way for us if you’re a parent who’s working and can’t drive them to that school every day,” Barbie said. “Then the idea was born that we’re gonna need to do something for our kids in our community.”

Summer BreakSpot locations in Seminole County, according to SCPS Communications Officer Katherine Crnkovich, are selected if they are planning activities that support children during the summer and meet USDA guidelines (including service for low-income individuals), health department standards and district requirements. 

Accessibility is also part of the consideration for these locations. 

“Safety is always a priority. For example, we do not want kids to have to cross a busy street to have access to food,” Crnkovich stated. 

Dining must occur on-site at these locations, a USDA requirement to ensure the children have a safe place to eat and others do not take their food. 

SCPS provided 23,892 breakfasts, 47,196 lunches and 6,444 snacks in June. 

Oviedo High School stopped serving summer lunches once summer school ended, and the current nearest location for Chuluota families is Indian Trails Middle School, an 11-mile drive from the Chuluota Resource Center. 

“Dates and times typically correspond with the availability of activities for children/teens at each location. Some locations are open for only a few days and others are open for weeks,” Crnkovich stated in an email. 

SCPS locations stop providing meals the week before school starts, allowing teams to train and prepare for the upcoming school year service, according to Crnkovich. 

An operation free of government funding, according to Barbie, the Center put together its own independent summer lunch program with nothing but community donations and resources. 

Right as the 2024-2025 academic year wrapped in May, the Resource Center posted sign-ups for community members in need of readily packed meals for children during the summer. Eighteen families in Chuluota have signed up for this program. 

Staff and volunteers pack bags with six days’ worth of food, ready for pickup on Saturdays. The food items included are primarily non-perishable to make packing and distribution easier, Barbie said. The Center does have weeks when families take home items that are perishable, including frozen pizza, salad, sausage and eggs. 

Thus, Saturdays have become an exciting day for the Resource Center’s staff. Cheryl Drury, Chuluota Resource Center’s fundraising officer, excitedly looks forward to seeing familiar faces during lunch pickup.

“People don’t see it, but when the people come in and they get it and those kids, we let them go back there and get their chips and whatever, pick them out,” Drury said. “The look is worth a million dollars. You look at their faces and the parents’ faces, they are so happy. I think that’s the best part.”

In June, the Resource Center gave out 694 lunches, Barbie said. As of mid-July, they have supplied families in the community with roughly 1,000 lunches. 

“I’m actually surprised to see how well it’s taken off,” Hatch said. “Sometimes it takes some time to develop a program like that, but I just think that our community was very open to it. I think it’s been warmly accepted by both the donating side of it and the recipients as well.”

Taking extra care

On the sign-up sheet, families had the option to include dietary restrictions. April Longenbach, the food handler at Chuluota Resource Center, worked closely with families to ensure the food was safe to eat for their children. 

Longenbach, a mother of special needs children, has the background knowledge to assess what’s needed for certain dietary restrictions.

When a child with a gluten-free restriction signed up for the program, Longenbach reached out to his mother.

“I called her to just kind of figure out where his level was, because it’s really hard in a food pantry. If he has a full-on allergy, then obviously we are going to have to intentionally go out and buy his food, clean it and keep it completely separate,” Longenbach said.

Longenbach sat on the phone with the child’s mother to confirm that he had a gluten sensitivity, asking her what foods they eat at home, what he likes, what he knows to cook and what he doesn’t. 

“We just kind of take extra care of them and, like, when I’m at the store and I see something, you know, gluten free, I know an 11-year-old’s gonna love, I just pick it up,” Longenbach said.

A sticky note is posted on the shelf holding all of the school lunch bags.

“August 2 last lunch giveaway,” it reads. 

The staff and volunteers are just about a month away from wrapping up the largest operation they have run since the Resource Center opened. The Center intends to distribute 1,400 lunches total by the end of the summer. 

“We’ve come a long way in a short period of time,” Drury said. “But as you know, with anything, as you grow you’ve got growing pains.”

The Worswicks and the rest of the Resource Center’s staff and volunteer team are getting by with what the community is willing to give back and share with their neighbors. In the four months that the Resource Center has been open, they took the donations and helping hands they’ve been given and hit the ground running. 

“I’m not a spotlight person, but I do want the center to be noticed so that we can keep going and growing,” Barbie said. “We don’t want it too big. We don’t want to be Second Harvest or Hope, that’s not our goal. Our goal is to help our community here in Chuluota.”