It’s a bustling Friday afternoon at the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry and the cold rain outside isn’t dampening any spirits as clients select items from the handsomely arranged wall shelving.

Still, it is easy to notice one thing about those shelves. They are barely half-full. Soup is going fast. Most of the baked goods section has been cleaned out entirely.

“It depends day-by-day. Right now, we do have a little bit less food than we normally do,” said Cory Eichorn, manager of the facility. “Oftentimes, this is all bread and pastries. We’re out at the moment.”

It’s illustrative of the unprecedented demand the pantry has experienced since the holiday season got underway.

In fact, Louis Albert, executive director of Jewish Family and Children’s Service, which oversees the pantry, said that numbers have been increasing since the summer when the amount of people served jumped from 5,000 to 7,000 in July alone and continued to rise thereafter. 

Eichorn reported a figure of 8,100 for November. 

“To my knowledge, we’ve never seen a month like that before,” he said.

The holidays are typically a time of high usage of pantry services yet this is unusual even by those standards.

“There are some usual spikes, such as around Thanksgiving,” said Albert, “but this goes far beyond what we normally would have seen as a spike and it is continuing. It is not dropping back down.”

Albert said other pantries in the area are reporting similar results. Reasons for the increase remain speculative but Albert believes a number of factors are to blame. 

“We don’t know for sure but we think that part of it is related to the economy and underemployment,” he said. “People may be working but they are not making enough money to manage.”

A second factor may be recent cuts to food stamps by the federal government and that could be exacerbated by a third problem – the gradual rise of non-food costs like rent, utilities and health care.

“Those are things that they have to pay and so what gets shortchanged is the money for food,” Albert said. “As expenses have grown, people have had less money available for food. I think it is one of those perfect storms of the economy, governmental policy and costs.”

Albert said donations have been generous but are still outpaced by need. He notes that the pantry is now able to hand out only about three-to-five days of food each month for clients instead of the previous seven-to-ten.

“It’s like a seesaw,” he said. “We’re always attempting to balance the need, the demand for food assistance and the supply of available food.”

Moreover, it isn’t just federal action on food stamps that affects enterprises like the pantry. The organization received the equivalent of $600,000 of food last year from the United States Department of Agriculture. Yet that amount varies depending on decision making at the Congressional level. Meanwhile accepting the aid obligates the organization to serve every qualifying person in St. Louis County. 

Albert said that can leave the pantry in a bind where it is committed to providing for an indeterminate number of recipients with a finite quantity of food.

“We see this as a very difficult situation,” he said. “It doesn’t have a simple solution.”

Eichorn said that canned goods and non-perishables are the most sought after; however, personal care items like shampoo and soap are also in demand. The pantry even provides supplies of dog and cat food at times.

“We’re also looking for monetary donations,” he said. “Money for food is great but we also need money to keep the lights on, to pay salaries and to pay the fuel bill for the vans to pick up donations in the community.”

Volunteer Peggy Musen said the pantry makes a big difference in the lives of recipients. She recalled a recent visit to a local grocery store, which resulted in a conversation with the clerk.

“She said, ‘That was the food pantry I went to until I got back on my feet. They made such a difference in my life,’” recalled the 63-year-old United Hebrew congregant. “It seems anywhere you go, someone has a story like that. She had been in need and we made a difference in helping her through that period of time.”

She said the best part about the pantry is that it allows clients a choice of items.

“The people here can come in and they get to pick their own foods instead of us just handing them a bag of prepackaged food,” she said. “The feeling from people is that they are really treated as a person.”

Musen, who works with the organization two days a week, has been volunteering for three years, a habit she picked up from when her mother did it.

“It gives you a good perspective that I think sometimes we all forget because we are busy with our own lives,” she said. “For me, the people I’ve met that are clients and the people I get the opportunity to volunteer with make me come back.”

The pantry also attracts attention from outside the Jewish community. Creve Coeur resident Jane Rapp is Catholic but treasures her time spent helping others at the pantry.

“A lot of times, they don’t even take the full amount that they can take for their family because they say, ‘No, you don’t have that much, give it to the next person,’” said the 54-year-old.

Unfortunately, not having much has been an increasing problem at the pantry of late.

“I’m apologizing to them saying, ‘I’m sorry that we don’t have more. We don’t have any milk today,’” she said. “They say, ‘Thank you, just the little bit that we get really helps us.’”

But there is a clear answer to the increased demand. It just takes everyone working together.

“Since I started last February, there just seems to be more and more people in need,” Rapp said. “I wish that people out there could realize that just a little bit can help. That’s all it takes, just a little bit to help the many.”