Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County
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SLO Food Bank

Coalition of San Luis Obispo County

About Us

From a humble beginning in 1989 with a handful of volunteers and an ice cream truck for refrigeration, the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County has come a long way.

Arroyo Grande Girl Scouts visit the Oceano warehouse
Twenty years ago the organization distributed about 400,000 pounds of food annually through 20 non-profit agency partners. Today, about 4.5 million pounds of food pass in and out our doors each year. We work hand in hand with more than 190 agencies: church pantries, recovery programs, after school programs, homeless shelters, soup kitchens and more. We also run four of our own direct distribution programs: Senior Brown Bag, Harvest Bag, the USDA Commodities program and the BackPack program for school children.

Today we're fortunate to have two warehouses to help us cover the county from San Miguel to Nipomo. Our main warehouse is in Paso Robles; our second location is in Oceano. Together these two warehouses give us 20,000 square feet of storage space. We also operate a small fleet of trucks.

One of our key strengths is our volunteer network. Our dedicated volunteers number more than 350 strong.  They are the people who enable us to get food from our distribution sites into the hands of SLO County citizens who need help. Without these people working with us in the field, we would not be able to run our direct programs. We also work with talented volunteers who help us in the office, on committees and at events. Want to join them? Read more about volunteering for the Food Bank.

Another vital ingredient in our success is the caring, community-minded population of the Central Coast. Our neighbors and friends step up to donate to help each other time and time again. We honor this generosity by keeping our overhead low-just 5% of our annual budget-and stretching each dollar donated to the fullest extent. You can make a difference by donating now.

We can think of no better place to operate a Food Bank than here in San Luis Obispo County. We are very proud to be part of life here on the Central Coast, and we work hard at our mission to see that no one among us goes hungry.

Want to make a suggestion? Ask a question? Learn more? Contact us now.