History

By design the Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio is capable of housing hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and grocery products at any given time, offering our member agencies a greater variety of products to distribute to those in need. 

In 2007, the Food Bank distributed nearly 3.4 million pounds of food and grocery products to our network of more than 120 member agencies.

Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio, formerly known as the County Cupboard, was established as a temporary hunger relief program in February 1982 in Vermilion. 

During the first few years of existence, the Second Harvest served Lorain County and distributed surplus commodities from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and food provided through an anti-trust lawsuit settlement. 

Second Harvest became an affiliate of America’s Second Harvest, the Nation’s Food Bank Network in 1985.  At the same time the organization was successful in gaining funding as an agency of the United Way of Greater Lorain County.  In 1986 Second Harvest was granted exempt status as a charity under section 501(c)3 of the IRS code and expanded to a regional service area including both Huron and Erie counties.  

By 1990 Second Harvest had outgrown its location and relocated to the City of Amherst.  As the need within the community continued to rise, Second Harvest made a commitment to begin an aggressive campaign to gather and distribute food and other resources.  In order to more accurately reflect the service to the community and partnership with America’s Second Harvest, the name of County Cupboard was officially changed to Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio in 1995.  Two years later Second Harvest’s service area was expanded to include Crawford County, bringing the total number of counties served to four.

Second Harvest continued to see tremendous growth in food donations but also in the need within the region.  A capital campaign was implemented to purchase land and construct a facility to meet additional warehouse and refrigerated storage space.  With the successful completion of the capital campaign the Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio relocated to the Deer Trail Lane facility located in Lorain.

Currently Second Harvest serves 120 member agencies who operate more than 150 programs throughout the region.  Member agencies include emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters and supplemental food programs.  To utilize our services, member agencies must go through an application and monitoring process.  Monitoring entails a visit by an agency representative to ensure that sanitation and food handling requirements are met.