At West Park Baptist Church, the Knox Haven Bread of Life (BOL) Store mimics a grocery store in nearly every sense, apart from visitors paying for their items. The folks they serve even receive an itemized receipt, helping them plan financially for whenever they’re ready to graduate from the pantry.
The newly remodeled pantry’s layout was inspired by The Store, a pantry and nonprofit in Nashville founded by Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley. Like The Store, Knox Haven’s BOL Store goes beyond traditional food assistance, offering other types of care that target root and accompanying challenges of food insecurity.
“Sometimes the food is really the driver to get [people] to where they can address other needs,” said Pantry Director, Terri Cage. When asked about reopening, she said, “I’m excited to see their expressions when we have all the fresh produce and the frozen items that we haven’t had.”
We are proud to have had this pantry as a Hero Partner for the last 10 years! Continue reading as we share more about Knox Haven’s Bread of Life Store in an interview that occurred just days before their grand reopening.
Can you introduce yourself?
“I’m Terri Cage, the Community Care Coordinator for Knox Haven. Knox Haven is a faith-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our motto is ‘people have questions, and we guide them to answers.’ We have seven different initiatives, and Community Care is one of those. The Bread of Life (BOL) food pantry store is part of Community Care, so I’m the Director of the food pantry.”
How did the food pantry at West Park Baptist Church get started?
“The pantry started from a food closet, basically, in West Park Baptist Church. People would come by the front office, knock on the door, and say they’re hungry as they’re walking up and down Middlebrook [Pike], so we had peanut butter, pop-top soup, and cans that we’d just give out.”
“We saw a real need, so we thought, ‘we need to do more than just this little closet,’ so one of our dreams was to have a pantry. [In] a class that my husband was teaching, [we] took that on as our project, and we started the Bread of Life food pantry.”
How did the name “Knox Haven” come about?
“We think of ‘haven’ as a place of rest and peace, kind of like ‘shalom,’ so we just thought we want to serve the Knoxville region, and we want to help share peace with them.”
“We have information here about our other initiatives, so we have a divorce care, a grief share for people who are dealing with loss… we have a counseling ministry for people who are having relational or family issues, we have financial freedom, which is for people that are struggling financially [with] bankruptcy or just problems having ends meet… it’s all free.”
“The neat thing about it is that people come here for the pantry, and we’re able to talk with them… we can figure out if there are other of the initiatives that would be applicable for them, and help them through a hard time.”
“For the food pantry, it deals with food insecurity, just trying to help ends meet, so they don’t have to make the choice between whether they’re going to pay rent, which is crazy right now, or whether they’re going to get food, so it’s not always that they can’t get food, but with their budget, they’ve got to make hard choices, so there’s a wide variety of reasons why people come.”
“We have homeless people that come… and we have people who are just struggling because they can’t afford healthy food options, so that’s one of the reasons we wanted to expand to the store, over our pantry, because the pantry was pretty much non-perishable canned items and things like that, and now, with our increased frozen food capacity, and our cooler, we can offer more fresh produce too. We’re really excited.”
Describe your relationship with Second Harvest.
“The pantry itself has been in existence for almost 12 years, and I’d say within 2 years we started working with Second Harvest, so we’ve probably been with them for at least 10 years.”
How many neighbors did you typically serve per month before the remodel?
“An average of 100 neighbors come in – that’s just that point of contact, [so] that doesn’t include the number of people in the family of course. We call them ‘visits,’ so that 100 visits could represent 300 people if it’s a three-person family.”
Do you expect an increase as word gets out about the new store?
“We’ve increased our days/hours, and we’re open to expanding [more] if we see that the need demands it and we have the volunteer base to support it.”
What went into your recent decision for a remodel?
“It just started as one room, and we were praying for a bigger place, for more room, and suddenly the computer room opened up. It just grew from there, and now we have this whole modular, and we’re actually able to not have to share it with any other ministries.”
“We thought ‘you know, it’s getting bigger than just up and down Middlebrook [Pike] – we can reach more people than that,’ so we decided to make a separate 501(c)(3), and we are trying to expand to have more community awareness [to] get more people involved in the process, as well as let our neighbors know what we have here.”
Walk me through how the new pantry is set up.
“They’ll come in and they’ll get their basket, and we have a little kid’s area. Then, they can just walk through the aisles, and pick [items] out.”
“One of the things we really like that we took a cue from The Store in Nashville, is [that] they have [greeting] cards, and they said that’s one of their most popular things, and we all know how expensive greeting cards are now. Before, we pretty much just had food, and we’ve expanded it to more household things now… All the condiment stuff is new for us too.”
“This is our really expanded area, the additional coolers, and of course the apples come from you guys! We’ve got chicken tenders, and all kinds of good stuff.”
“This is what we’re calling our ‘prep room,’ so when we get vegetables donated that need washing, we can do that here.”
“We also want people when they’re asking [for support from] all the other churches around this area, and in the community in general, to share maybe 10% of their garden. If they’re raising tomatoes, for every 10 if they could give us one, then we can wash and prep it in here and put it out. It’s a good season to be opening too, because it’s right at garden season!”
“When they get their items, they’ll come up to the counter as you go out, and everything they have will be scanned, and then put into bags. Then, we will give them the receipt that will just say this is the amount that would have cost you in the store.”
“It just is a way to show them, if they are budgeting, what this all would have cost, and also helps us with our accounting. It’s not anything that they have to pay back, it’s just an information source for them.”
“At some point, what we are wanting to do is identify specific families that have specific needs that we can help with, and help them with budgeting, or any questions they might have like that, and that receipt, that capability, will also help with that.”
“Before, we were approximating how much we gave each person, but now, we’ll be able to check people out because we’ve barcoded everything, and we can tell them exactly what they got from us. The helpful thing is when they go to the store, they’ll have a better feel for what things are costing.”
“We really want to make it a cheery, friendly place in there, so that’s why we have the carts, and the little extra things… the candy. We do want to add healthy options, and we’re doing that with our produce, and even our choices [in] our canned items, but we have some fun stuff too, we have some chips.”
Did you start the pantry with a client-choice model, or has that come about with the remodel?
“We have always done that – dignity of choice. We love that they can come in and actually choose what they want. If they’re allergic to peanut butter, they don’t need peanut butter in a box, so we find that it’s really efficient too, for our food supply, to let them be able to choose what they really can use. Sometimes if they have heart issues, they want salt-free… so it just works better, and people are just so thankful when they come.”
“They’re a little bit tentative and apprehensive; some people are. They’ll say it’s the first time they’ve ever been to a pantry… they didn’t know what to expect, and then when they leave, they’re smiling. It’s such a good thing, they just feel valued, I think, and everybody wants to feel valued… I know I do.”
How do you view your role in the Knoxville community?
“Everybody has challenges in life. At some point in your life, you’re going to meet challenges. Our goal is to help people address those challenges, and be able to live in a way that they feel like they have a meaning life… a meaningful existence.”
“People have questions about those challenges and how to meet them, and as Knox Haven, and [through] the pantry, we want to help guide them into answers. That’s why we are able to have conversations with them here in order to see ‘[what] circumstances happened that brought you here, let’s see what those are, and how we might be able to help with them, besides [just] food.’”
Do you utilize volunteers?
“We encourage volunteers from not just from our church, but throughout the community too, that have a heart to help people and align with our mission.”
“We have many positions — we’re looking for computer people, stockers, greeters, [and] escorts,” said Volunteer Coordinator, Von Sims. You can sign-up by visiting Knox Haven’s website here, or by contacting the Knox Haven office at (865) 421-5428.
Do any favorite stories or memories come to mind from the pantry?
“I had a guy come in a few months ago, and after he got ready to go, he said ‘this may be the last time that I’m here.’ I’m like ‘oh, okay, well it’s been good to have you here, but why do you say that? You’re always welcome back!’ He said ‘well, the doctors tell me I’m probably not going to live past another 4 weeks, so this is probably the last time you’re going to see me alive.’ He had cancer, and that’s the prognosis they had given him, and so I said ‘okay, let’s just stop right now and pray.’ We did, and he was very emotional about it, and when he got ready to go, he said ‘thank you for just talking to me, that was worth coming in just to talk.’”
“People do have challenges they’re having to meet, and sometimes the food is really the driver to get them to where they can address other needs.”
“We had one of our pantry neighbors that passed away recently, and his sister called, and said that he had told her that he wanted Al, my husband and the director of Knox Haven, to do his funeral. We drove up to Kingsport and met the rest of his family up there, and did the graveside funeral service for him.”
“We do develop relationships. There are people that may come once, and then they’re good, because they were just having a rough spot in a month, but there are people that we develop relationships with too, even to the extent that they would [ask us to do their funeral].”
“Life is really all about relationships, and people, and even a one-time encounter can make an impact on you, and that’s really what we want to do here.”
What excites you about reopening?
“Our grand opening is Tuesday [June 3rd], and so none of our neighbors have seen this yet. We’ve still been serving them with our inventory, but we’ve had these doors closed. When they come in next week, the ones who’ve been here before, they’re going to be totally shocked, so we’re excited about that.”
“I’m excited to see their expressions when we have all the fresh produce and the frozen items that we haven’t had, and just the space. It was kind of cramped [before], and [they] always had to wait. We had a rule, because of dignity, of just not rushing and crowding people, but you could see how cramped that space was in the original place, so people would have to wait a minute because we wanted to clear one aisle before we could start the next aisle. Now, we have enough room that we can have people channeling through, and they won’t have to wait as long.”
“I’m just excited about our expanded options.”
What makes summertime different at a food pantry, especially with school being out?
“We tend to get more kids in the summertime, and that’s why I wanted to do that kids zone, to be able to accommodate that. There’s a family that comes that has two little girls, and whenever they come, they’re like ‘Ms. Terri!’… they run up and hug me and everything. We have a candy jar, and all the kids like to raid that.”
“In the summer, we do tend to have a different demographic with regard to kids coming in, but the number of people [is] fairly consistent.”
Looking Ahead
As we dive into summer and enjoy all the exciting foods & activities that accompany the season, Second Harvest invites you to remember families who are choosing between necessities like air conditioning, or their next meal. For these families, the thrill of school letting out is quickly dampened by the loss of free or reduced-priced meals.
That’s why we’re asking for your support today — and it’s even more impactful this summer than ever before. With long-term recovery efforts still underway following Hurricane Helene, and recent federal funding cuts to the USDA, more folks than ever before are turning to your food bank for assistance. Help us help others with a contribution today by visiting SecondHarvestETN.org/give. Thank you!