BATON ROUGE - The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank has served the community for decades, but now they are in need of a helping hand.

“If we don’t have people step up to help us, we’re not going to be able to continue to help the increasing number of people that we’re seeing," Mike Manning, President and C.E.O of the GBR Food Bank, said.

Manning says there is an alarming spike in the number of requests for assistance from the food bank in recent weeks. He believes the increase in demand is a direct result of inflation and fuel costs.

“We’re very worried about the future about the continued increase in demand, but also our ability to provide food with increasing food costs and our own fuel costs with our ability to pick up food, and get it to our agencies to distribute."

In times like these, a donation makes all the difference. The food bank happily accepts canned goods and other food donations, but money is preferred.

“We can take that dollar and stretch it a lot further than you can in the grocery store. It allows us to buy stuff at wholesale prices to be able to get tractor trailer loads of product in here of donated product. So it’s really the best, highest use of any donation for us," Manning said.

Manning does acknowledge that the demand from the community is happening more gradually than it did when COVID-19 first shut things down. They're using this time to prepare for what could happen in the future. 

“We’re trying to be as efficient as we possibly can. We’ve refined our routes for distributions. We are focused on maximizing every dollar we get so the donor knows that we’re taking care of it and getting the most food we can with that dollar."

The food bank is accepting volunteers and donations. Click here for more information.