Bookstore Food Drives Help Food Stamp Recipients

With federal funding for food stamps threatened, employees at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb., went to their boss with an idea: If people were going hungry, maybe they could help.

Workers at the store, Sower Books, soon set up a food collection bin near the front door. Customers and neighbors brought in bags and boxes of groceries; others came to browse for books, saw the bin and returned later with their own donations. Within a week, the storage room was stuffed with close to 2,000 pounds of food.

Nearly out of storage space, the bookstore put out a call for drivers on social media, and earlier this month, customers volunteered their cars and pickup trucks to ferry boxed and canned goods to a food pantry across town. The store’s back room has since filled up again with donations. On Monday, staff members made another run to the pantry, delivering more than 830 pounds of food — enough for roughly 1,700 meals.

“The community is really coming out, I think, because the bookstore is so loved,” said Lori Hirt, a regular customer who saw the bookstore’s request for drivers on Instagram and came with a pickup truck.

Tory Hall, Sower’s owner, said the food drive felt like a natural extension of the store’s role as a community gathering place, where people drop in to do puzzles, have coffee, attend a book club and snuggle with the store’s adoptable rescue cats. Many customers seemed grateful that Sower gave them an easy way to help, Hall said.

“We’re not sitting here sad that everything is burning,” Hall said. “We’re going to find a fire extinguisher.”

As members of Congress inched toward an end to the longest government shutdown in history, communities around the country sought ways to help people affected by the suspension of federal benefits including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps tens of millions of low-income Americans buy groceries. And with the shutdown creating anxiety and uncertainty for those who depend on government aid, many independent bookstores took on a new role as hubs for food donations.

“By the end of Sunday, you could barely walk through the store,” Swydan said. The donations filled his Chevy Traverse SUV and his floor manager’s minivan.

River Bend Bookshop, a Connecticut bookstore with locations in Glastonbury and West Hartford, learned about The Silver Unicorn’s food drive and decided to start their own “tote for tote” donation drive. “We were like, this is phenomenal, we have a lot of tote bags, let’s do this,” said Aislinn Gara Grady, who manages events for the store. Customers brought in around 100 bags of groceries during the first week of November, and staff members drove the donations to nearby food banks.

Independent bookstores have long operated as hubs for activism and community service. In recent years, some stores have increasingly waded into political and social issues by conducting voter registration drives, sending free books to L.G.B.T. Q. prison inmates and distributing emergency contraceptives to women in states where abortion access has been restricted.

Dozens of bookstores have rallied around the issue of food insecurity in recent weeks, according to the American Booksellers Association. Magic City Books in Tulsa, Okla., said it will donate 10 percent of all sales from Nov. 1 to Nov. 27 to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., placed food collection bins in their stores. Old Town Books in San Angelo, Texas, is offering customers who donate canned goods a discount on books. Bike Trail Books in Loveland, Ohio, received thousands of dollars in donations to pay for gift cards to Kroger grocery stores that it has made available to community members.

“The little free pantry, I think, is really cool because there’s no barrier for entry for families,” said Kyle Churman, one of the owners of Werner Books. “You don’t have to go into a building, you don’t have to see anybody. That’s a big thing with poverty: the shame.”

Customers can leave food in a wicker basket near the store’s cafe, which a barista sorts and loads into boxes between drink orders. Churman then drives the boxes to food pantries.

Katy Perez, who owns a tiny bookstore in Tyler, Texas, called The Headless Librarian, posted on Instagram and TikTok asking customers to bring canned goods to her bookstore that she could pass along to a local food pantry. The pantry told her “kid-friendly food” like canned ravioli and SpaghettiOs would be especially welcome, because so many parents come into food pantries hoping to feed their children.

“During times like this, it’s hard to look away,” Perez said. “I just thought, I’m very small, and I don’t know how much of an impact I can make. But I have to do something.”