The Foodbank of Santa Barbara County will open a new 57,000 square foot warehouse at 82 Coromar Drive on March 1. Nicknamed “Sharehouse,” the location will store and distribute a greater amount of food to the public.

The food bank, which has served the Santa Barbara County (SBC) community for 43 years, is moving away from its previous location at 4554 Hollister Avenue to a larger, more advanced warehouse. 

The new share house will allow the food bank to accept and store an additional 80,000 pounds of food per week. Courtesy of FoodBank of Santa Barbara County

The new Sharehouse will allow the food bank to accept and store up to 80,000 pounds of food per week, according to Director of Marketing for the Foodbank of SBC Laurel Alcantar. This means they can now store 750,000 pounds of food, which makes approximately 585,000 meals ready for distribution, according to their website. Over 200 agencies that source food from the food bank — including UCSB’s Associated Students food bank — will now have access to greater quantities of food.

“Additional produce will make more food available to [students], both on campus and at our other distributions,” Alcantar said. The 32,000 pounds of fresh produce donations that they had to turn away in the past due to a lack of space can now be stored and distributed to the public, according to their website.

The new space provides ten times more freezer and cooler space and a new volunteer center, according to Foodbank of SBC CEO Erik Talkin. It is also estimated to reduce the food bank’s emissions by over 37,000 miles per year because food will no longer need to be stored in the North County facility, limiting driving back and forth between the two locations, according to Alcantar. 

“We’ve been looking to get out of that place for a while, we finally found a much bigger place, and we spent three years now getting it ready,” Talkin said. 

Courtesy of FoodBank of Santa Barbara County

The Sharehouse will also include space for 1 million pounds of food designated for disaster relief, which will help prepare for crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, should SBC face disasters of similar magnitude, according to Alcantar.

Beyond that, the new volunteer center at the Sharehouse provides a centralized location for volunteer opportunities, which was not present in the previous location. This provides a more organized way for students to get involved with the food bank, through volunteering to work with food or partaking in food bank educational programs, according to Talkin.

“We have a variety of different roles that students can fill, whether it’s with a group or working on a project, and this will give us a centralized location that has space available,” Alcantar said.

The food bank employees aim to gain public attention for the new Sharehouse through a grand opening and celebration called “Sharehouse Day” on March 1. The food bank will provide food trucks, raffles, a variety of booths to educate the community about healthy eating, as well as opportunities to sign up for volunteering and the food bank’s monthly donation program.

“It’s just a way of connecting people with this really valuable community resource, and the whole purpose of what we do is to make it fun as well,” Talkin said.

As part of the food bank’s continued mission to serve the community, the new Sharehouse increases its capacity to store and distribute food, connect with the community through volunteer opportunities and reduce its environmental impact. 

“It’s a very big milestone for our organization, and it’s one that our community really needs,” Alcantar said.