Golden Harvest Food Bank boosts pantry supply as summer meals end

Golden Harvest Food Bank said one in four people in its Augusta-area service region faces food insecurity as summer meal programs wound down, and Tiffany Matthews said the bank worked with about 20 food pantries across 12 counties and moved more than 12,000 units of food. Matthews, Golden Harvest’s hunger relief network coordinator, said that total was up from prior years.

The numbers point to a familiar late-summer squeeze for food recovery groups: demand rises just as children lose access to school meals, and pantry shelves have to stay stocked while family budgets tighten. Golden Harvest has been pushing food through a wide network, not just into one warehouse. In June, the bank held a distribution at Blythe Elementary School for families with children under 18, from 10 a.m. to noon, with no registration required, as part of its Summer Harvest Program across a 24-county service area in Georgia and South Carolina.

That reach matters for operators who manage the back end of food recovery work. More pantry partners mean more pickup coordination, more inventory movement and more chance that a delay shows up quickly at the neighborhood level. For A Simple Gesture staff and volunteers, the same pressure plays out through green bag route planning and pantry handoffs: when summer schedules change, volunteer coverage and pickup timing have to move with them or donations arrive too late for the week’s distribution cycle.

Golden Harvest has been managing that seasonal load for more than one summer. In late May 2025, the bank said it was expanding its Summer Harvest Feeding Program after already rolling out its Summer Sprouts Program, with service reaching 13 CSRA counties. A year later, the bank called for help after donations dropped 40%, a reminder that higher demand does not always come with higher supply.

Golden Harvest describes itself as serving 24 counties, a count that matches Feeding America’s directory, and its leadership page identifies Amy Breitmann as president and CEO. For nonprofits built on neighborhood pickups, pantry relationships and volunteer reliability, the lesson is plain: late-summer need does not wait for the holiday drive to begin.