Why a New Milford Facility?

A LOOK AT THE CURRENT FACILITY – WE ARE OPERATING AT 163% CAPACITY.

For 40 years, the Food Bank of Delaware has been delivering hope to our neighbors in need. We have grown from humble beginnings as an organization that served 50 agencies out of a basement in the Northeast State Social Service Center in Wilmington to a statewide hunger-relief organization with operations in both Newark and Milford.

Unfortunately, the need for our emergency food assistance services has not decreased over time.

Hunger exists in each and every community of Delaware. Despite our small size, more than 100,000 Delawareans struggle to afford food. Close to 50,000 of those neighbors reside in Kent and Sussex Counties. In Fiscal Year 2022, we distributed 16,517,697 pounds of food – nearly half of that food was distributed to neighbors in Kent and Sussex Counties struggling with food insecurity.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that far too many of our neighbors are just one lost paycheck away from needing the services of the Food Bank of Delaware.

We can no longer effectively serve residents of Kent and Sussex Counties out of our current facility on Mattlind Way in Milford.

• We are operating at 163% capacity.
• We are renting space to house our Healthy Pantry Center and additional office space for staff.
• Our culinary students lost part of their classroom when we needed to expand the volunteer room to keep up with demands for food.
• We cannot offer our 11-week warehousing/logistics training program out of the Milford facility due to lack of space.
• We cannot expand our programming in the current facility.

As a result of population growth in Kent and Sussex Counties and continued demands for our services, we are embarking on a campaign to build a new 67,000-square-foot facility in Milford to better serve our community. In July 2021, we purchased 11.5 acres from the City of Milford in the Independence Commons, and we plan to be operational by the fall of 2023.