Maricopa Pantry hit a significant milestone last year.

The well-known food bank served Pinal County residents more than 3.1 million pounds of food in 2024, a record compared to previous years.

That’s enough to feed more than 1,500 adults three meals a day for an entire year.

The food bank has steadily grown since it opened in 2004 — it dished out 2.8 million pounds in 2022 and 2.9 million pounds in 2023. Being able to do so is something founder and CEO Jim Shoaf calls “a blessing.”

“It seems like every six months, there’s another milestone for us,” he said. “This mission just keeps branching out, but it’s a blessing because not only do we feed the community, but we also talk with them through difficult times, we pray with them.”

The pantry served more than 313,000 people from 96,000 households in 2024. Shoaf said he served at least 2,300 families weekly during the holidays.

With that growth comes an ever-expanding need for regular volunteers and monetary donations. But Vice President Alice Shoaf said there’s one thing the food bank also needs that is usually limited to the holidays: non-perishable food drives.

“We can always use help like that because that’s the kind of food we don’t get a lot of. We get a lot of fresh foods and frozen foods, but we don’t get a lot of staples, like rice, beans and boxed foods,” she said. “We tend to get a lot of these around Christmastime, but the rest of the year is pretty slow.”