The South Portland Food Cupboard has outgrown its facility on Thadeus Street, says Executive Director Dwayne Hopkins. “We just need more space.” Drew Johnson / Sentry

The South Portland Food Cupboard is searching for a new home, a much bigger one.

The pantry has gotten too big for its 4,000-square-foot space on Thadeus Street since the pandemic hit, spurring greater need and a greater intake of supplies.

“Our intake of food is significantly larger than what we’ve had in the past,” Dwayne Hopkins, executive director of the Food Cupboard, told the Sentry on Monday. “The ability to store food and store it safely is our primary concern.”

About half of the Food Cupboard’s clients live in South Portland with the rest coming from surrounding areas. It also collaborates works with other pantries in southern Maine and holds joint food drives.

Since Hopkins was hired as executive director seven years ago, the facility has changed vastly, he said. Much of the space now looks similar to a grocery store with rows and rows of shelves holding various food items. A long line of refrigerators along one of the walls became insufficient, and a walk-in fridge had to be installed.

Between a tent and two storage containers outside, the pantry has added roughly 1,000 square feet of space, but that isn’t an acceptable long-term solution, Hopkins said.

“We’ve got all we’re going to be able to get here,” he said. “We just need a larger space.”

Clients line up in the parking lot and select their food items in the tent.

“Recipients used to come and wait in the building,” said Richard Borrelli, the Food Cupboard’s board president. “COVID kicked them out and then our growth took over that space and it completely changed how we operated.”

Borrelli said they are looking for a facility of between 6,000 and 8,000 square feet, or land to build one that size.

The Food Cupboard currently leases its space at 130 Thadeus St. and would prefer to buy a new building rather than lease again.

“We want to buy because leasing is just exorbitant now,” Hopkins said. “If we’re going to get into the price of what it would cost to lease, we’re about where we would need to be to be able to buy a facility.”

They’d like to stay in South Portland, but that’s a tall order.

“It’s slim pickings in South Portland,” Hopkins said.

The space crunch has forced Food Cupboard volunteers to make do with less space to work, and they have to go through Hopkins’ tiny office to access the bathroom.

“They deal with hot, sweaty conditions in the summer and cold, windy conditions in the winter,” Borrelli said, but credited volunteers for doing it all “with smiles on their faces.”

Hopkins said it takes three things to keep the Food Cupboard delivering on its vision of helping neighbors in need:

“We need funds to finance the vision, we need people – volunteers and staff – to staff the vision, and then we need a facility to be able to facilitate the vision,” Hopkins said. “That vision has just gotten bigger and bigger.”

For more information on the Food Cupboard, including how to volunteer and for food distribution schedules, go to southportlandfoodcupboard.org or call 874-0379.