ST. PAUL -- On Friday, Dec. 13, about 50 people bundled in thick winter jackets waited in the warm lobby of Keystone, a new food shelf in St. Paul. Outside, others stood in line, braving subzero temperatures.
To the right of the lobby, a "market" displays a variety of groceries -- grapefruits have remained mostly untouched. On the left, a wall is adorned with colorful drawings -- playful doodles from young children who have spent time waiting in the lobby.
Georgi Nguyen, director of basic needs at Keystone Community Services, a nonprofit primarily specializing in food shelf services since 1939, said this "market" model is intentional.
"We call our food shelf here the food market, with the goal of restoring dignity and respect to folks that come in," she said. "I mean, all the shelves that we installed into the food market when we moved to this building were intentional to create an environment that looks like a grocery store and feels like a grocery store."
In October, around 11,000 people used Keystone's services. While the organization's food shelf numbers remained consistent in 2024, at about 2,500 households per month, Nguyen said those numbers do not reflect the needs of people they turn away.
Nguyen said some days they reach the food shelf's maximum capacity and cannot help everyone who comes to their door. On Thanksgiving this year, they turned away about 60 people, she said.
Minnesota food shelf visits in 2024 are expected to reach 9 million, 1.5 million more than the state's record high in 2023, according to early December reports from Food Group Minnesota, a nonprofit and research organization.
Nguyen said 90% of the people they serve are at or below twice the federal poverty threshold. The federal poverty line is $15,060 for a single person and $31,200 for a family of four, according to U.S. Health and Human Services.
Nguyen said it's not often their patrons are unemployed, but they frequently cite housing costs as spurring their need for Keystone's services.
"A lot of our shoppers are working folks, and on average, people visit the food shelf three times a year," she said. "There's this misconception that people try to game the system or abuse access, but a lot of the times when we see folks that ... just lost their job, they haven't seen us for a long time and needed to come back."
Minnesotans made 7.5 million visits to food shelves in 2023, a 36.4% increase from 5.5 million visits in 2022 and a 102% increase from 3.7 million visits in 2021, according to Food Group Minnesota.
As Food Group Minnesota tracks the numbers from 2024, Executive Director Sophia Lenarz-Coy said, they expect a new high of 9 million food shelf visits. She said that while this is not as dramatic of an increase as from 2022 to 2023, a steady uptick in need persists.
"Had we talked to anybody in this sector a few years ago, I don't even think many people would have thought it was possible for the food shelf system in the state to have almost 9 million visits," Lenarz-Coy said.
She said it's hard to say what drove this increase but speculated it's most likely inflation of grocery prices and post-pandemic cuts to federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
She noted the numbers are rarely driven by unemployment, with Minnesota's unemployment rate at 3.4% in 2023, ranking 21st in the nation, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Nguyen said that since federal and state-funded COVID-19 benefits ended in February of 2022, Keystone saw a steady increase in new patrons every month.
Food stamp benefits decreased by an average of $82 per month in 2023 for 235,000 Minnesotans enrolled in SNAP, according to the Food Research and Action Center. National food prices increased by 5.8% in 2023 and are now 25% higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"The positive part that (9 million visits) says is that it is an incredibly adaptable system," Lenarz-Coy said. "We have well over 300 nonprofits, and all 87 counties in the state, they have really risen to the occasion."
Six Minnesota counties saw their food shelf visits decrease in 2023 -- Nobles, Itasca, Lincoln, Faribault, Cook and Dakota -- and 10 counties -- Kittson, Benton, Grant, Pipestone, Crow Wing, Carver, Washington, Nicollet, Watonwan and Steele -- saw increases, according to Food Group Minnesota.
The state recently made efforts to combat some of these food insecurity numbers. On Nov. 25, Gov. Tim Walz announced $5 million in new funding for food shelves ahead of the holidays. COVID-19 relief funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act are being repurposed for the food shelf funding, he said.
Lenarz-Coy also noted the help of Minnesota's free meals for students. The program marked one year this fall, with an estimate of over 150 million meals served in the first fiscal year between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.
"All Minnesotans deserve to sit around a full table and spend time with loved ones during the holidays," Walz said in a release announcing the funding. "Minnesotans are generous people who do their part to ensure their neighbors have what they need -- and this funding will go a long way to supporting those efforts. I'm grateful for our partnership with organizations working to tackle food insecurity and distribute these funds quickly."
Lenarz-Coy said, going forward, eyes are on the Farm Bill that expires in 2025 and encapsulates SNAP funding, tariffs under a new administration, improved benefits for seniors, and continued state funding like the allocations made by Walz earlier this month.
"There are real threats right now that there could be cuts to SNAP at the federal level, and again, we just really raise the political awareness that the emergency food system is not in a place to absorb any potential cuts to snap," Lenarz-Coy said. "It's really important that we just continue to invest because I think everybody who's ever had the stress of not knowing how they're going to feed their family wouldn't wish that on anybody."