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Our History


Five Loaves & Two Fish Food Pantry is located in Griffin, Georgia.  Griffin is a town of about 25,000 people and we are part of Spalding County (population 66,000).  We are not one of the bigger cities/counties in Georgia, yet we are one of the largest partners of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.  What a great history we have.

We started in 1989 and still going strong 34 years later.  A group of people from St. George’s Episcopal Church in Griffin felt this ministry was sorely needed.  We were once an important mill town, but, when the mills closed down in the 80’s and 90’s, our community suffered a high rate of unemployment.  Five Loaves & Two Fish started with a few church members bringing cans of food to church. Our first location was a closet (pantry) at St. George's. Then it moved to a room downstairs at our church before moving once again across the street to the old Greyhound Bus Station. From there it moved to a small donated house across from our church. Both the bus station and the house were part of  St. George's property. Lastly, in 2012, we moved  to our current location in a building across the street from our church.

Five Loaves & Two Fish distributes groceries every month to about 1,000 to 1,200 households.  This equates to about 20,000 bags per year.  We go through 350,000 to 500,000 pounds of food per year.  We buy most of our food from the Atlanta Food Bank (our most important source) and from other local sources.  We also have three (3) major Food Drives each year (Boy Scouts, Postal Carriers and Together We Can).  There are many local businesses, farmers, churches and residents that donate food to us all year long.

Grant dollars from businesses and churches like St George’s are where we get some of our operating dollars.  We also get funding from the residents and farmers in our community.  We have kept up to date with technology and have a complete database on our clients.

We are staffed by about 125 regular volunteers.  In addition, we periodically have a special Saturday  (Mobile Day) where we have additional volunteers.  On this day, we get a truck from The Atlanta Food Bank typically with produce (6,000 to 10,000 lbs.).  We distribute this to about 200-250 clients.  This distribution does not count against their monthly allotted bag of groceries.

Around Thanksgiving we try to distribute a turkey or turkey voucher to a local grocery store.  Of course, this is completely dependent on monetary donations from the community  This past year we were fortunate to give (550) $30 Food Depot gift cards so they can purchase a turkey or other items of food for their Thanksgiving meal.