Four years ago, Overland Park residents Jennifer and Adam Parker decided to meet a community need in their front yard by opening a tiny, free food pantry.
Since its opening, demand for the Tiny Pantry Times has only continued to grow. Earlier this year, it became clear from that growth that the pantry needed a new home.
This spring, it found one.
On June 1, the Tiny Pantry Times reopened on the east side of the Overland Park Christian Church at 7600 W. 75th St. — allowing for more volunteers and more room for inventory for the growing community project.
The pantry opened in 2020
When the Parkers opened the Tiny Pantry Times, Jennifer said, it was to help people during an uncertain time — the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everybody was terrified and there was no food in the grocery stores,” she said. “Everyone felt very isolated.”
The couple initially started offering food items at a Free Little Library site in front of their home, just off West 71st Street and Metcalf Avenue.
Jennifer expected that to last a couple of weeks, she said — but then community donations began pouring in and the pantry had a quickly-growing following on the neighborhood messaging app Nextdoor.
When demand was still high by that September, she knew it was time to build a larger pantry hutch.
“It brought a lot of people together because you had a common goal,” Jennifer said. “A lot of friends in the community that we met, we met with me standing in the porch and them halfway into the yard.”
The blue pantry hutch contains a range of items, from canned goods and snacks to recipe kits for things like birthday cakes.
Many donated items come directly from residents, but several grocers, restaurants and other larger organizations have stepped in — including Starbucks, Texas Roadhouse, Papa John’s and the Dairy Farmers of America Foundation.
The pantry outgrew its former home
When the Tiny Pantry Times opened, Jennifer said it distributed roughly 2,500 pounds of food per month. Today, somewhere between 16,000 and 21,000 pounds of food leaves the pantry each month — serving between 50 and 200 people a day.
As the pantry grew in popularity, its presence grew in the Parkers’ northern Overland Park neighborhood, which led some neighbors to complain about increased traffic.
With that in mind, the couple made the decision to seek out a new home for the pantry last year, but they still wanted to remain close enough to their primary recipients and volunteers off 71st Street and Metcalf Avenue.
Their new digs at the Overland Park Christian Church provide more space for pantry inventory as well. The Parkers’ previously kept pantry items in one full room and half of another in their home.
At the church, the pantry’s inventory now fills two rooms with items of all kinds — from canned goods and snacks to hygiene items and period products. The pantry itself also now sits on an ADA-compliant ramp, which was built just for the pantry.
“We’re still within half-a-mile of our home, so people that have limitations with transportation can get here,” Jennifer said. “This is still in our community, so the people that have invested in this project for the last three and a half, almost four years are still seeing, ‘Ok, this is how it’s growing.’”
The Parkers want to see it keep growing
The Tiny Pantry Times has not only seen a rise in recipient demand, but in community support as well. Today, the pantry has 20 volunteers in addition to Jennifer and Adam Parker.
“A couple of our volunteers have even been recipients in the past,” Jennifer said. “We now have such a strong community base — everyone feels involved, and everyone takes ownership.”
With the new space, the couple says they hope to grow their volunteer base even more.
“People want to help,” Adam said. “(They do it for) the smile that we see on recipients’ faces.”
With its new chapter, Jennifer hopes the Tiny Pantry Times’ expansion inspires a trend for neighboring communities.
“I would hope that other communities see what we do, and realize that if you can get community buy-in, this is absolutely something that can be done,” she said. “It can draw people together.”
