About Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina
Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina (SHMETROLINA) strives through education, advocacy, and partnerships to eliminate hunger by the solicitation and distribution of food. SHMETROLINA has been in existence since 1981.
Who We Are and What We Do
We provide a regional distribution warehouse and branches that supply food and grocery items to charitable agencies that assist people in need. We provide training, technical assistance and hunger education to our partner agencies.
Counties Served
We serve a total of 24 counties - 14 counties in North Carolina including Anson, Burke, Cabarrus, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Rowan, Rutherford, Stanly and Union. We serve 10 counties in South Carolina including Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Greenwood, Lancaster, Oconee, Pickens, Spartanburg, Union, and York.
To see facts about each county, click county on the map below.
Agencies Served
SHMETROLINA provides food for over 950 partner agencies including soup kitchens like Urban Ministries, emergency pantries like Nourish Up, homeless shelters like Uptown Men’s Shelter and Center of Hope, senior programs, and low-income daycares.
Food Distributed
SHMETROLINA annually distributes 78 million pounds of food and other household items throughout our 24 county service region. Over 47 million pounds of our annual distribution is fresh produce, meat and dairy.
The Need
12.3% of our service area population, almost 485,000 people, live in poverty including over 155,000 children and 54,000 seniors. Our emergency pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters continue to report significant increases in requests for assistance over last year. These numbers do not incorporate our new counties in SC.
Where Our Food Comes From
Approximately 76% of the food we distribute is donated, 10% is purchased and 14% of the food comes from government commodities. These numbers do not incorporate our new counties in SC.
How We Distribute Food
We distribute food through our main warehouse in Charlotte and through branches in Hickory (Catawba County-NC), Salisbury (Rowan County-NC), Spartanburg (Spartanburg County-SC) and Anderson (Anderson County-SC).