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Owens Earns Food Recovery Network Grant as Food Pantry Demand Doubles

Visits to the Owens Community College food pantry more than doubled from fall to spring semester last year. Now a $2,500 grant from the Food Recovery Network (FRN) will help the college get more food, including leftovers from campus events, into students’ hands.

Owens student Letitia Hatch works in the Harvest Garden at the Center for Campus and Community Connections. The college recently received a grant from the Food Recovery Network to help with reclaimed food.

The grant will allow the Center for Campus and Community Connections to purchase a new double-door cooler, which director Krista Kiessling said will be called the “Community Fridge,” filled with donated and reclaimed food available for students.

The Community Fridge will be placed in the Center for Campus and Community Connections’ food pantry in College Hall. It will be in place later this year.

“We need to have more ready-to-go food,” Kiessling said. “If someone has an event and there are big trays of Mexican food, I can bring it in here with paper plates and a microwave and feed a bunch of people.”

Since tracking with FRN began at the end of July, Owens has salvaged more than 200 pounds of food in eight weeks. The grant includes a benchmark of 1,500 pounds salvaged in a year. If the college saves 4,000 pounds, it will receive an additional $1,500, and if that number climbs to 10,000 pounds, FRN will give the college an additional amount at its discretion.

According to its website, FRN fights climate change and hunger by recovering surplus food and donating it to local nonprofit organizations that feed people experiencing hunger.

Campus and Community Connections increased support for Owens students in the past year. From fall semester 2025 to spring 2026, the number of people served in the food pantry increased from 1,409 to 2,870. While that number dipped to 1,939 in summer 2026, that still represented a significant increase from the 824 people served in summer 2025.

Demand has stayed high at the mobile pantry carts throughout campus locations, where anyone can grab items to eat. For the 2025-26 academic year, 12,656 items were taken from the carts.

“Food is expensive, and it’s only getting more expensive,” Owens psychology student and Connection Mentor Letitia Hatch said. “If we can give students access to more food that’s healthy, so they’re not getting food out of a vending machine, it’s better for them.”

For Kiessling, applying for the grant made perfect sense. The college was already active in recovering food. Under the grant’s terms, salvaged food includes not only extra food from campus events but also food from the community garden and some donated groceries. It can also apply to food the pantry purchases from Empuzzlement, a Toledo-area nonprofit that stocks and supplies donated goods.

“It doesn’t really affect what we do,” Kiessling said. “Basically, it incentivizes us for what we’ve already been doing. The only additional work on our end is weighing and tracking the food that we bring in.”

Hatch said the work of reclaiming food and helping feed her fellow students is rewarding.

“We have a lot of students who don’t have access to on-demand food on campus right now,” Hatch said. “When events come back and they bring all of this reclaimed food, the students love it. It also encourages students to go to events because they’re seeing all of this food. It encourages them to get more involved.”

Kiessling has designs and dreams to go even bigger, replicating community kitchens that have been successful in other Ohio communities. For now, though, her focus is on keeping Owens a zero-waste campus and making sure every student who comes to campus has access to healthy food and even a hot meal.

“Wasted food makes me absolutely nuts, especially because I see hungry people all of the time,” Kiessling said. “In this community, there’s no shortage of food. There’s a shortage of infrastructure to move it and get it to the people who need it when they need it.”