Williamson County has no shortage of great restaurants, from independent local staples to chain restaurants and fine dining.
Though, with some 10,000 people in Williamson County living below the poverty line, nonprofit resources like the Nolensville Food Pantry play a vital role in combating food insecurity and celebrating the power of food in the greater Williamson County community.
The food pantry is a ministry of Providence Baptist Church which regularly serves hundreds of families a month and provides groceries and general merchandise goods, from canned vegetables to toilet paper.
The food pantry started in 2009 in a small cabinet inside of a church member’s home garage before it eventually grew, expanding to the home’s dining room before moving to a multi-use garage on the church campus.
Last Spring, the church began constructing a two-story barn kit building that they began to use in the Fall of 2021, having outgrown their previous space that had been used for years which sits feet away from their current building.
The new building has two grocery store-style aisles with several shelves lining the walls of the first floor, with everything from coffee grounds to salad dressings, barbecue sauces, cake mixes, dry pastas, canned soups, cans of baby formula, fresh breads and more.
“It was thousands of pieces, it had every screw, every nail, everything you needed,” Nolensville Food Pantry Director Debbie Noland said, calling it a “rewarding” experience. “You opened it up and it said, put section one with section two and screw this to that, and we built it, the church built it, we did it ourselves. We didn’t hire anybody, and it was ours. We painted walls and hung lights and did all the electricity. It was good.”
The pantry has been deliberately structured and styled like a typical grocery store with aisles in order to bring more familiarity and comfort to the space.
“It’s gone from being more of a utility to a relationship,” Noland said. “We wanted them to have a nice experience, a place where they could come and not feel ashamed.”
That comfort, respect and welcoming attitude has been key for the pantry’s success as they welcome community members in need into a space where they can experience the camaraderie and connection that we all know sitting around a dinner table.
“Food brings people together even when you’re in need of food,” Noland said. “It’s hard enough to come as it is, to admit that you don’t have food. We just like to treat them like family.”
There are at least 75 families a week who regularly use the food pantry, but the need is even larger as some families may only come bi-weekly or every other month from across Williamson County and surrounding communities, with new families added to their list every week.
The food pantry operates with the help of about 12 regular volunteers in addition to dozens of volunteers from groups like the Boy and Girl Scouts or students in need of volunteer hours, with hundreds of volunteers having helped over the nearly 13 year history of the ministry, especially during the holidays.
Those volunteers do everything from collecting food donations from local residents and businesses, stocking and organizing the shelves, packing snack bags and setting up a market with fresh fruits and vegetables and simply greeting people, loading recipients' vehicles or directing traffic on their busiest days.
“The public and the community, especially here in Nolensville, are amazing,” Noland said. “They have the biggest hearts, and if it hadn't been for Nolensville through all this in the past couple of years, we would have never made it.
"There were times where couldn't get anything and they are freely giving all the time, you can put it out there on our Facebook page. ‘I need ramen noodles’ or ‘I need green beans,’ and by the next week, we have so many that we don’t know what to do with them.”
That community extends not just to Nolensville residents, but also to grocery stores that the pantry partners with as well as cultivating relationships with other food resources such as Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee.
Due to public health concerns with the ongoing pandemic, the food pantry temporarily transitioned to providing recipients with pre-packed grocery boxes and now limits how many people can enter the food pantry at one time.
Nolensville Food Pantry
As the effects of the pandemic continue and other international events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine threaten to exacerbate supply chain issues and food production shortages, the ability for the food pantry to meet the growing needs of the community continues to be challenged, but Noland said that they have learned to adapt.
“I decided a long time ago that the more I worried the worse, it didn't make any difference,” Noland said. “It's been very weird and it's hard to plan, and we've kind of had, you have to go with the flow of it. You know, if one week we don't have black beans, we just have something else and its spot.
“We've had weeks where we didn't have toilet paper, there was a toilet paper shortage, and at first, it really bothered me and then I just had to realize that, you know, I'm not in control of this. I put a lot of faith in God that I know he is going to supply us with what we need at the time we need it.
“He's always providing, you know, sometimes we don't get enough of one thing and sure enough, there'll be something else out there,” Noland continued. “You say something like, you know, my size-six diapers didn't come from Amazon today and sure enough, somebody else will show up out here with it.
“He's gonna take care of us so that we're able to take care of our neighbors.”
The realities of food insecurity in these evolving and turbulent times has also led the food pantry volunteers to learn to reserve judgment in favor of grace, especially when the idea of food insecurity doesn’t match up with the realities in Tennessee's wealthiest county.
“Anybody can go through a hard time,” Noland said. “It doesn't matter if you live in a tiny house or in a million dollar home down here at the Governor's Club. If you lose your job, you get cancer, lose a spouse or the economy goes belly up, we're all the same in that matter. You’ve still got a house payment, you still have a car payment, you got to get to work, you got to pay for gas, you got to buy food.
“If they pull up in a really nice car, or they have really nice clothes or something like that you don't know what's happened to them the day before, the week before the year before,” Noland continued. “It's to love your neighbor and try to help them through whatever they're going through, and, you know, maybe this is something that helps them to not have to worry about getting food and they can worry about getting their kids' soccer shoes. This is a little bit of a help, to where their lives can stay normal. And they can feel good.
“At the end of the day, we always feel like we've done what we're supposed to do.”
The Nolensville Food Pantry is always accepting donations and more information about how to give can be found here.
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