“One of our values is community service and giving back to our community and instilling that value in the kids at a young age,” said Tami Thomas, center owner. If we have 20 people show up but the kids are having fun, and they get to experience what it’s like to participate in a community service project then it’s a success.”

Those interested in attending are asked to bring three food items to donate in exchange for dinner, which will start at 6:30 p.m. Kids will be collecting and organizing the donated food, passing out tickets, clearing tables and passing out ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

This is the second time the child care center has done the spaghetti dinner, with the first in 2018 which Thomas said was “a huge success. The kids loved it. We were able to get a lot of food for the food bank.”

Dan Hansen, warehouse administrator, said the distribution of food from the food bank has steadily increased since June 2022, and donations can not keep up with need. They have been using their inventory, but if need continues to increase while donations decrease they will need to start buying food to stock the shelves, he said, and limit the amount of certain products each person takes.

“We’ll always be able to be in business. We will always have food,” he added.

In June 2022, 4,375 families or individuals received service from the food bank. Since then, the number of people receiving service has steadily increased, and this June the need more than doubled with 9,058 people receiving food. This trend of increasing need for the food banks is consistent across all of their food bank locations, he said.

The largest amount of donations come daily from grocery stores, called grocery rescue while food drives provide much of their inventory. Hansen said the biggest food drives come from the U.S. Post Office and Feed Utah, put on by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This year, Hansen said, they received 3,781,551 pounds through donations and gave away 3,953,613 pounds of food, meaning they disbursed 172,062 more pounds than received. The amount donated during food drives is also decreasing, Hansen said.

On May 13, the post office held their food drive and received 60,541, pounds which were donated to Provo Food Bank. This was 24,155 fewer pounds than the May 2022 drive. Similarly, the Feed Utah food drive received 124,335 pounds of food this year after taking in 244,297 pounds of food in 2021.

Hansen said the loss of donations is largely due to the economic situation that many previous donors are now in.

“People that would donate are probably just kind of getting by, they just don’t have any extra food to donate. And then other people, their situation has deteriorated and they just need some help, and so they come to us; it’s a two edged sword really,” he said.

Someone who qualifies to receive food from the food bank — which is based on the income and size of family, among other factors — can go to the food bank every two weeks. Homeless individuals also qualify. Hansen said the parking lot is completely full each day this year, a change from years past.

“The disbursements are up and the donations are down from a year ago, but we’re still getting food in and we’re still giving it away, so we’re still here,” he said.

In addition to Provo Food Bank, the Tabithas’s Way food pantry, which has locations in Spanish Fork and American Fork, has “really helped out.”

Hansen said the food Bank is always looking for volunteers, as are both ha’s Way locations. Anyone interested can contact them through their website or, Hansen suggested, just go to the food bank building and ask to volunteer. He added that they are also always serving those in need, there is no cut off for the amount of people that can be eligible to receive food from the food bank.