Tiered Racking in our New Warehouse
The Merrimack Valley Food Bank is thrilled to officially announce our move to our new home. This move has been a long time coming, and we are so thankful for everyone who has helped us along the way.
We purchased our new building in July of 2022, and it has been a labor of love from many to get it ready to distribute more than four million pounds of food per year! What started as an indoor sports complex is now a 25,000 square foot food bank. Our warehouse takes up a substantial portion of the square footage, while the rest is comprised of a lobby, prep kitchen, conference room, offices, and more!
Anyone who has had a chance to visit our previous home will understand the excitement our staff feels walking into our brand-new home every day! In our old building, our staff was spread out across three separate floors, had to share offices due to lack of space, and had no dedicated space to gather and host meetings. We are now lucky to have a hallway of dedicated office space with enough room for every staff member to have a private space to work. We also have a conference room equipped with technology to host meetings with those who may need to attend remotely. Our hope is to be able to share this space with other nonprofits and groups in our community who need somewhere to meet. The MVFB staff is also delighted to have a dedicated break room and kitchen space with everything needed to prepare and enjoy meals together.
Break Room Kitchen
Our Summer Lunch staff and volunteers may be most excited of all. In past years, the MVFB Staff and volunteers who run this program had to prep snacks and lunches in borrowed kitchen space at local schools. While we are so thankful to St. Michael’s School and Lowell Catholic High School for letting us use their space for so many years, we are excited to be able to run this program more efficiently from our own space, cutting down on both transportation expenses and staff travel time!
Our staff members are not the only ones excited about our new home; our volunteers now have more room to help serve the food bank’s mission. Our Mobile Pantry department has a dedicated space for volunteers to stock shelves and fill bags for our Mobile Pantry clients. Our Operation Nourish volunteers no longer must fill bags in a remote corner of the basement, and our sorters have a large, brightly lit space to check and sort all our food drive donations. We are so excited to keep hosting volunteers in our new home (if you are interested in volunteering, you can fill out an application here!).
Mobile Pantry Area
Our new warehouse might be the most impressive upgrade of all! In our old building, our food storage was spread out in many different areas over three different floors. Moving food up and down
on our freight elevator (one or two pallets at a time) was no easy task. We now have an abundance of storage on one level and in one area to safely organize and store all of the food we receive before it goes out the door to families in need. Our new larger refrigerator and freezer space was much needed as well, as at one-point last year we had to store frozen food on our truck and even turn away donations of frozen items due to lack of space!
There is so much to say about our new home, and we are looking forward to sharing more about it with everyone. If you would like to see the new space for yourself, please reach out to schedule a tour (978-454-7272 or email Kim Trainor). We would be happy to show you around!
