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Our Story

We meet people where they are on the road to stability. 

Need Help? Support New Yorkers

We’ve been on the ground with New Yorkers for over 45 years. 

It takes courage to ask for help. So when someone does ask, we respond in a way that makes it worth the effort. We pride ourselves on welcoming every guest and embracing their concerns–not as if they were our own but because they actually are our own. While everyone has their own story, New Yorkers all over the city–our friends, neighbors, and colleagues–are working hard to meet their basic needs. 

For over 45 years, we have been meeting those needs, growing and evolving along the way. 

We offer access to a choice of healthy groceries and hot meals, health and wellness services like hygiene care and nutrition education, and supportive services that help people access critical safety-net benefits like health insurance and SNAP.

We are not experts in everything that closes doors to opportunity and stability, but we are expert at listening to our community and ensuring they get the help they’ve asked for. This is what restoring dignity means in practice. This is what serving with compassion and care looks like.

We started as a small, neighborhood pantry, serving 30 families. Today we are a citywide partner that helps New Yorkers find their way forward. 

We’ve grown because...

we’ve always wanted to support our friends, colleagues, and neighbors. As their needs have evolved, we have responded. Today, millions of New Yorkers are seeking paths to stability. We help every step of the way, from offering healthy meals and groceries to supportive, critical services.

We served
12.6M

meals to our guests last year.

We saw
811K

visitors comes through our doors last year.

We secured
>10.8M

in resources for our guests last year.

Man with create

Our Team

We are dedicated to all New Yorkers. And we’d love to share more about who we are and what we do.

Meet our team 

Our History

For 46 years, we’ve helped New Yorkers put food on the table and find the support they need. From our beginnings as a neighborhood pantry to our work across the city today, we’ve grown alongside our community—always putting dignity, choice, and care first.

  • 1980

    NYCP (once Yorkville Common Pantry) opens on the Upper East Side. We quickly become a center for food distribution in East and Central Harlem.

  • 1988

    We partner with Community-Based Organizations and begin to expand care to include supportive services for guests with HIV/AIDS, and referrals to shelters and substance abuse agencies.

  • 1992

    We grow our space and continue to expand our partnerships to accommodate more guests and offer more services.

  • 1994

    We expand our work to support our unhoused guests more thoroughly, partnering with a housing organization to help place them.

  • 2001

    After 9/11, we open New York State’s first 24/7 emergency food program. We begin to teach nutrition education to help mitigate chronic illness and poor health outcomes for our guests.

  • 2005

    We renovate our space again, this time adding a new floor to accommodate 100 more seats, maximize our storage and distribution capacity, and make space for hygiene facilities.

  • 2009-10

    We serve 2M meals in one year, earning us the Robin Hood Foundation’s “Hero Award.” We expand our services further to focus on benefits acquisition for our guests and begin buying directly from farmers.

  • 2011

    We introduce a choice pantry model that offers our guests the same opportunity to choose their groceries as any paying shopper.

  • 2013-15

    New York Common Pantry becomes our official name to acknowledge that we now serve New Yorkers from all over the city. We add federally-funded SNAP education and senior supplemental grocery services.

  • 2017

    We open a second choice pantry location and continue to expand our services.

  • 2019

    We serve nearly 6.5M meals and access $9M in resources and benefits for our guests. We join fellow frontline service providers in a collective called the Roundtable to help drive down costs and share knowledge.

  • 2020

    We launch a mobile pantry to reach our guests where they are. We never close our doors during the pandemic.

  • 2021

    Our mobile pantry program expands to more than 50 distribution sites and serves 2 million meals.

  • 2022-23

    We open a new ADA-compliant, state-of-the art location for our guests in the East Bronx and a 23,000-square foot food storage and distribution hub in Hunts Point to keep pace with growing need across the city.

  • 2025

    TK