As Food Insecurity Deepens, Lower Cape Outreach Council Expands

ORLEANS – In the basement of the Lower Cape Outreach Council’s offices on Brewster Cross Road, the noise of drills and hammers fill the air. It’s now an unfinished space, but the nonprofit’s CEO, Katie Wibby, can see the end result.

 A double-doored entrance will allow vendors to deliver food and produce directly into the space. Clients will have the space they need to shop for their groceries, and storage for dry foods will be greatly increased. To the right of the new distribution area, a flexible space will allow programming and events as well as additional room to prepare orders.

 The council’s pantry renovation also includes space dedicated for a walk-in freezer, which will greatly enhance the pantry’s ability to store refrigerated items.

 “It’s going to have a significant impact on what we can order and what we can keep in stock,” Wibby said.

 The new freezer is being funded through a community impact grant from the Greater Boston Food Bank, the pantry’s primary source of food. On July 24, Christina Peretti, senior director of community impact for the food bank, presented the council with a check for $17,835.

 The council is in the midst of renovating the entirety of its Brewster Cross Road building, which it purchased in April 2023. Shortly afterward, the council worked with Cape-based architect Mary-Ann Agresti of the Design Initiative on plans for the building renovation, including an expanded 2,203-square-foot pantry in the building’s basement. 

The existing pantry, which has been relocated to the first floor of the building during construction, occupied just 836 square feet of the basement and shared space with Katy’s Corner, which provides clients with clothing and other household items. The plan is for Katy’s Corner to take over the temporary first floor pantry space once the basement renovation is completed, Wibby said. 

 “We’re thrilled,” said Wibby, who joined the council as CEO in 2022. “This is something we’ve talked about for a very long time.”

 The expansion comes as demand continues to grow across the council’s nine pantries. Wibby said the council accommodated approximately 17,000 visits last year, 20 percent of those at its Brewster Cross Road pantry. But just in the first half of 2025, she said monthly visits are up an average of 25 percent from last year.

 The food bank’s most recent food insecurity report shines further light on the growing need locally. The report found that food insecurity on the Cape and Islands had jumped from 20 percent to 34 percent in one year.

 “The demand just keeps ticking up, and as you know with the impending cuts to SNAP and medicare, we’re expecting those [numbers] to go up even higher,” Wibby said.

 The Greater Boston Food Bank services 190 towns east of Worcester County, and Peretti said she’s seeing the same spikes in demand across the food bank’s 600 partnering agencies.

 “I think there’s a misunderstanding that COVID has ended, and the numbers therefore should go back down,” she said. “And they haven’t. They continue to rise.”

 Wibby said the expanded pantry’s distribution area will be designed in the style of a supermarket, allowing clients to come in and shop for their own items. That includes a fresh produce area that will serve as a centerpiece of the distribution area.

 “It’s really important to have spaces like this where you can offer variety, you can offer fresh produce and in an environment that’s dignified and where clients feel like they have choice,” Peretti said. 

 To the right of the distribution area, a flexible area will give the council and its volunteers additional space to host programming, nurse-run blood sugar and glucose testing, and meetings. It will also come in handy around the busy holiday season when volunteers are busy preparing meals for Thanksgiving and toys for families in December, Wibby said. 

 The walk-in freezer will also allow the council the space to keep more frozen items onsite. That’s especially important come time for the council’s annual Thanksgiving turkey drive. Wibby said the council distributed 752 turkeys to families last fall. But without the adequate space to store them, the council has in the past had to store them in Provincetown and bring them back to Orleans for distribution.

 The food bank currently accounts for 80 percent of the food that comes into the council’s pantry system. But does an expanded space mean that the food bank will increase that number? Peretti said it’s possible, but it remains to be seen.

 “We have 600 partner agencies, so we are always taking requests from partners for more weight,” she said. “It all sort of depends on trucks and logistics and our own fundraising.”

 The council is currently in the midst of a $1 million capital fundraising campaign to cover the cost of the full building renovations. About half of that money will be used to fund the pantry expansion, Wibby said. The hope is to have the new pantry open by early November, she said.

 “Our clients followed us from a small space down here to an even smaller space upstairs with the awareness that they’ll be able to spread out a little bit and have a little bit more space to breathe,” said Karen Ross, the council’s director of operations. “I think they’re excited about that and looking forward to it.”

 Wibby said that the added space is a boon to the council’s pantry operations. But as the need continues to grow year over year, the question remains as to whether the expansion can continue to accommodate the greater demand in the long term. While the future need is hard to predict, Wibby said the council will continue to work to meet it. 

 “We just do the best we can do,” she said.