Good Samaritans of Garland Meets the Need with Compassion and An Eye Toward the Future

The NTFB Retail Partner of the Year will move to a new location next year to increase its capacity and services.

Antoinette admits she used to have a picture in her head of who relied on food pantries. After visiting Good Samaritans of Garland when her family needed a little extra help over the past two years, she now knows that hunger can impact anyone.

“I feel like there’s a stereotype for coming to the food bank and through coming I just learned that’s not true,” says Antoinette, a mother of four. “So many people come. It’s such good quality food and honestly, it’s such a help with how expensive groceries are nowadays.”

Antoinette’s is one of the more than 5,400 households served in July by Good Samaritans of Garland, known as Good Sam. The nonprofit is a North Texas Food Bank partner pantry, and they were recently awarded NTFB’s Retail Parter of the Year for their commitment to fighting hunger and to working with local retailers to rescue food so it can be provided to neighbors facing hunger.

“Unfortunately, the trend has been regardless of season, the need is constantly going up,” says Executive Director Sara Kenefake.

Good Sam operates its pantry each weekday from a small home-turned-nonprofit in Garland. They’re in partnership with the City of Garland to move into a former library in 2025, which will give the organization four times the space it has now. With the additional room, Sara says they’ll not only be able to serve more neighbors but also to increase their focus on nutritious items and partner with other places to offer wraparound services, like financial literacy classes or SNAP application assistance, which is provided by NTFB.

Until they move, Pantry Manager Wendy Hardeman says they’re relying on an NTFB Produce Pod to provide some extra cold storage so that they can keep enough produce on-hand to offer it to any neighbor who comes through for groceries. Qualifying neighbors can visit Good Sam twice a month to receive a box of nutritious food and pantry items.

Wendy says they serve multi-generational households, families with two working adults and individuals facing costly health challenges, among others. Without access to food, many of the neighbors they see would be faced with the difficult choice of whether to buy groceries or pay for another necessity, like housing.

“For every dollar that we can save somebody in groceries, that’s another dollar they have to put toward rent or their electric bill or gas,” Wendy says.

Neighbor Richard says he began visiting regularly when he was without housing and he continues to visit now, even if he has to walk, because the staff and volunteers are kind and offer assistance without judgement. “If there’s any way I could help them, I would,” he says.

Antoinette says when they moved their family to the Dallas area from Georgia for her husband’s job, the cost of living went up just as they were welcoming a new baby. With four young children, they decided she would stay home because of the high price of daycare, but living on one income meant they were not able to afford the nutritious food they know their kids need. A neighbor suggested they visit Good Sam and Antoinette says the produce and fresh foods they’re given each month are a blessing that supplements the groceries they are able to afford.

“The ladies here are so sweet. They try to remember faces and welcome us,” she says. She’s so thankful for the help that she tries to support fellow neighbors when she can, whether by sharing baby items her kids have grown out of or telling others about Good Sam.

Sara says Antoinette’s experience mirrors what she sees each day. With inflation keeping grocery prices, housing and utilities higher than ever before, more and more people need assistance, often for the first time in their life.

“Food insecurity doesn’t have a certain look to it. When you don’t experience it, you kind of have an idea in your head of what that looks like and truly it is your neighbor, it’s your family members, it’s your friends,” she says. “It’s not one look. It’s people with one income or two. There’s no face to it.”