Hays County Food Bank announces new San Marcos food distribution location

Hays County Food Bank will soon host a new drive-thru, public food distribution at San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium in San Marcos. 

The food bank’s new distribution location will serve lower-income households who are facing a food emergency with a variety of fresh produce, shelf-stable foods and baked goods upon availability. 

Hays County Food Bank Program Director Jessica Cruz said the new distribution location comes amid an increase in households utilizing the food distributions as well as needed additional space. 

“Right now, we have seen over the past few months just an increase in the number of people going to our distribution,” Cruz said. “...Since we moved [distribution sites in San Marcos to the public library], we started off with about 100 clients pretty regularly. We have now reached more than 150 consistently every single Monday. Part of it’s because the San Marcos Public Library is a great location for us right in central downtown. It’s on a bus route, so people can go there. People know where to go and it’s in the evening. Those large numbers, though, the library parking lot cannot accommodate us.”

The food bank will begin utilizing the San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium parking lot on Friday from 10-10:45 a.m. Those looking to attend a Hays County Food Bank distribution event should meet the one of following criteria: Have a household income at or below the 185% of the Federal Poverty Level; participate in a qualifying federal assistance program (ex: SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid); or have a temporary food emergency due to loss of income, disaster, etc. 

Those who plan to attend Friday’s distribution should enter at Monterrey Oaks and State Highway 123. The food bank asks clients to clean out their trunk or  truck beds before arriving to make it easy for the food bank team to easily and quickly load up groceries. 

Cruz said Rattler Stadium provides a great location because it’s well known and Central Texas Food Bank also utilizes the space for its own distributions. 

“It’s just a really familiar place,” Cruz said. “It’s the high school and the football parking lot, which is where we’re going to be. It’s a large parking lot, especially for something like a drive-thru distribution. We already have the set up, we know how Central Texas Food Bank does it there. It’s very easy for our clients to get in, get checked in and get out. And so, we’re really hoping that by adding this other distribution location that we can service more people and then also maybe alleviate some of the traffic issues that we’re causing at the public library.”

Cruz said among the reasons new clients attend distributions are cuts in work hours because of COVID-19, personal medical issues and job loss. 

“I think because of Covid, because of the pandemic, food banks were really highlighted at the very beginning of it,” Cruz said. “And so, we saw a lot of new clients, people who had been living on the edge and then suddenly their hours got cut or their jobs got cut. We saw this big increase and we are, I think, still seeing that increase coming to us.”

She said food bank staff aims to make people feel welcomed when they attend one of their distributions. 

“Our staff and our interns will call [new clients] back and say, ‘OK, you know, you’re a new client, you came to one of our distributions recently. What kind of other resources do you need help with? Do you need help with your utilities? Or do you need help with childcare? Do you need help with rent assistance? What kind of assistance do you need?’ They do these follow up calls and I think that helps them know these people care and these people want us to be better,” Cruz said. “And we do, that’s the whole point of the food bank. We’re just sort of a stepping stone.” 

Cruz said that no one needing assistance should feel “ashamed about using [the food bank's] services.” 

“We’re not sharing their information with anybody,” Cruz said. “Everything is kept confidential. We really try to meet their needs. We are always looking for people to tell us what they want … We want to give them stuff they’re going to use. So, I would just encourage the community that has something that they feel like could improve our services to reach out to use. We may not be able to do it. But we can’t change something we don’t know about. I tell that to all our volunteers, all of our staff, many of the clients that I go to distribution with. If we don’t know about it, we can't change it. So, just always encourage people to contact us if they have anything they’d like to share with us.”  

The food bank’s full distribution schedule can be found at haysfoodbank.org.