Minnehaha Food Shelf

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Minnehaha Food Shelf

A coalition of 7 S. Minneapolis churches: M'haha UMC, Grace Episcopal, Lake Nokomis ELCA, Living Table UCC, M'haha Communion ELCA, St. Open Tuesday -10 am-3 pm

Peder's ELCA & Spirit Catholic Community. All are welcome regardless of religious affiliation. Minnehaha Food Shelf serves primarily the area between the Crosstown and Lake Street, Cedar Avenue and the river. No one will be turned away. Each month we serve more than 600 households.

10/13/2026

Thanks to the efforts of the Nokomis East Giving Garden and Noko Rebel Gardeners, Minnehaha Food Shelf clients have enjoyed a bounty of beautiful, just-picked produce for the past few months.

Since July, the Giving Garden has yielded 815 pounds of produce, and the Rebel Gardeners have harvested 1,521 pounds of produce.

Collectively, that's more than a ton of tomatoes, peppers, beans, eggplants, zucchini, kale, lettuce, squash, beets, basil, rosemary and other items. What an extraordinary achievement!

As you can imagine, these fresh-from-the-garden vegetables and herbs have been very popular with Minnehaha Food Shelf clients, and we are grateful for all of our generous, hard-working neighborhood gardeners. Thank you!

(Pictured: Noko Rebel Gardeners member Jeri Kapellen, delivering her garden's output on a Tuesday morning in August).

10/09/2026

There's still time to take advantage of the pre-event price break for our annual Fall Pasta Fundraising dinner. Purchase your tickets early and you'll receive a pre-event price break. Between now and October 16th, tickets are $32; after that, tickets are $37 (children under age 5 eat free). Advance ticket purchase is required (there are no ticket sales at the door), so take advantage of these early-bird savings.

Once again, we're fortunate to have neighborhood favorite Fat Lorenzo's providing the delicious fare, and the evening will also include a prize drawing; purchase five tickets for $5 or 25 tickets for $20. All kinds of local businesses are generously donating gift cards and merchandise, including Oxendales, McDonald's Liquors, Dominguez Family Restaurant and Half Price Books.

We'll be gathering from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at New Branches (5011 31st Avenue South, Minneapolis), which is home to three of our seven coalition congregations: Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church, Living Table United Church of Christ and Spirit Catholic Community. We're going to have a lot of fun. Bring your friends and family, and we'll see you soon!

You can purchase tickets at https://ticketstripe.com/MinnehahaFoodShelfFallDinner2026

10/01/2026

Coming this Sunday: Writers for Democratic Action and Theatre de Facto are staging their retelling of "It Can't Happen Here," the 1935 novel by Minnesota Nobel Prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis. Their version, "It Can't Happen Here...Again," along with "No Kings: Paul Revere Resists" will be presented at 5 p.m. at Minnehaha United Methodist Church (3701 E. 50th Street, Minneapolis). The event is free and open to the public. "We are a small group of theatrical and democracy devotees," is the company's message. "We know politics are a drag right now and that we are all pretty exhausted. Come as we look back and look forward to how America has dealt with similar failures in leadership."

09/26/2026

Have you purchased your tickets for our annual Fall Pasta Fundraising Dinner? There's still time to take advantage of a pre-event price break: Through October 16th, tickets are $32; after that, tickets are $37 (children under age 5 eat free). Advance ticket purchase is required, so take advantage of these early-bird savings. We'll be gathering on Thursday, October 22nd from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at New Branches (5011 31st Av. S., Minneapolis), and we're fortunate to once again have neighborhood favorite Fat Lorenzo's providing the pasta and salad. The fun-filled evening will also include a prize drawing; purchase five tickets for $5 or 25 tickets for $20. We look forward to seeing you, and we're grateful for your support. Purchase tickets here: https://ticketstripe.com/MinnehahaFoodShelfFallDinner2026

09/12/2026

In August, we provided fresh, nutritious and delicious food to 2,644 children under the age of 18. Unfortunately, that figure is up from the monthly children-served-per-month averages of 2025 (2,468) and 2024 (2,385).

We also continue to be an important resource for the 65-and-over population. In August, we served 488 seniors, a significantly larger figure than the seniors-served-per-month statistics of 2025 (329) and 2024 (281).

Food insecurity among children and seniors in our south Minneapolis neighborhood is a growing issue. And remember: Hunger also takes a toll on mental health. According to a 2024 study by the public health journal BMC Nutrition, people experiencing food insecurity have a significantly higher likelihood of also undergoing psychological distress.

Your support makes a difference in the lives of children and seniors, and we're grateful for your generosity.

09/03/2026

Join us at our Fall Pasta Fundraising Dinner, which is taking place on Thursday, October 22nd. We're offering a pre-event price break: Purchase through October 16th, and tickets are $32; after that, tickets are $37 (children under age 5 eat free). Advance ticket purchase is required, so take advantage of the early-bird savings. Once again, we're fortunate to have neighborhood favorite Fat Lorenzo's providing the catering, and the evening will also include a prize drawing; purchase five tickets for $5 or 25 tickets for $20. We'll be gathering at New Branches (5011 31st Av. S., Minneapolis), which is home to three of our seven coalition congregations: Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church, Living Table United Church of Christ and Spirit Catholic Community. We look forward to seeing you! Purchase tickets here: https://ticketstripe.com/MinnehahaFoodShelfFallDinner2026

08/28/2026

It's a win-win scenario: We need bags, and you probably need to get rid of bags. We're happy to receive your paper grocery bags — especially the ones with handles — and get them back in circulation. You can drop them in the big blue collection barrel at Minnehaha United Methodist Church, 3701 East 50th Street in Minneapolis. Thanks!

08/19/2026

In Minnesota, produce season peaks in August, and we're happy to report that this late-summer goodness is very much in evidence at Minnehaha Food Shelf. This week, deliveries from our two food banks — Second Harvest Heartland and The Food Group — included zucchini, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, yellow onions, red onions, beets, cucumbers, green beans, cauliflower, purple cauliflower, sweet corn, cantaloupe, watermelon, cabbage, Napa cabbage, apples, eggplants, collard greens, peaches, cherry tomatoes and radishes.

Additionally, thanks to the volunteer efforts of the Nokomis East Giving Garden, Noko Rebel Gardeners and several generous green thumb-ed neighbors, we were able to offer an abundant array of locally grown, just-picked produce, including cucumbers, tomatoes, Swiss chard, several types of squash, a half-dozen varieties of peppers and a fragrant assortment of herbs.

According to The Food Group, food shelves across the state had a cumulative 859,076 visits in March, the largest monthly figure in Minnesota history. We are witnessing this rise in food insecurity first-hand, serving record numbers of households each week. Fortunately, because of the generosity of people like you, we have been able to meet this growing demand with a wide range of nutritious and delicious fruits and vegetables. Thank you!

08/13/2026

Along with just-harvested produce from the Nokomis East Giving Garden, Minnehaha Food Shelf clients are currently enjoying the bounty of a second locally-grown initiative, Noko Rebel Gardeners. The new group is supplying a steady stream of just-picked tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, squash, cabbage, greens, herbs and more. We talked with representative Caroline Hallstrom.

What is the Noko Rebel Gardeners origin story?

Earlier this year, with ICE attacking us, the neighborhood really came together in an immediate way by doing work with getting food to people. As the need shifted, and we no longer needed proxy shoppers, we saw that we were organized and had this framework, but we didn't know what to do with ourselves. So we asked, 'Who's interested in a long-game plan of growing produce with the intention of donating to food shelves?' At that meeting, about 50 hands shot up in the air.

That's amazing.

Yeah, we're doing it! It was evident to a lot of people that we wanted to continue to be helpful and have something tangible that we could work on together. We created a decentralized giving garden, with people growing vegetables in their yards in Nokomis East, although we've opened it up to Nokomis West, too. It's incredible that people are willing to give up chunks of their yard.

How does it work?

I'm a Hennepin County Master Gardener, and there are six other master gardeners in the neighborhood, and it's been exciting to get to know one another and meet all of these other Rebel Gardeners. We've been resourceful and scrappy. So far we've built about 20 raised beds. Friends and other Rebel Gardeners offered their woodworking skills, and we got things donated, like reused deck materials. We've had seed swaps and bed-built days. We arm-wrestled the master gardener program to donate dirt for raised beds, and then had a dirt day where we moved 25 cubic yards of dirt out of the Crosstown Covenant Church parking lot in five-gallon buckets. We've done garden tours of each other's yards, letting people show off their work and talk about what they've done.

How does the produce get to the food shelf?

We organize and round up for collection on Tuesday for Minnehaha Food Shelf, and every other Wednesday for Crosstown Covenant. Right now we're at about 400 pounds donated, and with cucumbers and zucchini that number will grow exponentially. We're hoping we can hit 1,500 pounds this year.

So far, so good?

For year one it's been really nice. I'm so grateful to meet so many incredible gardeners and make new friends, and grateful that so many people thought that this would be fun. Gardening and backyard homesteading are very popular concepts right now, and we're combining these topics with newfound community resilience. I'm just so proud of everyone. This is a whole machine of people, an incredible team.

Does this project have any role models?

There are similar spontaneous projects like this in other neighborhoods. The fact that all of Minneapolis has this urge to help one another through food and horticulture is really exciting to me.

What happens next?

It's a pilot year. We're doing what we can and trying to recruit more people to join us. The point is to get people fed, and this is an amazing way to make something good out of the chaos we went through earlier this year.

Interested in learning more? Contact Nokomis East Neighborhood Association at [email protected].

08/08/2026

Calling all Thrivent members: You may be eligible for benefits that can support Minnehaha Food Shelf. One program is Thrivent Choice Dollars, which can be donated directly to the food shelf on your behalf. Another is Thrivent Action Teams, a $250 grant that can be used by nonprofits for fundraising expenses, supplies and more. To learn more, you can talk to your Thrivent financial advisor. "We have resources to help walk you through those steps," said Marcia Alexander, a Minneapolis-based Thrivent associate. You can also learn more at thrivent.com/about-us/membership. Thanks, Thrivent!

Address

3701 E. 50th Street
Minneapolis, MN
55417

Opening Hours

10am - 3pm

Website

http://minnehaha.org/foodshelf.html

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