Serve Wenatchee is a business that’s all about heart

WENATCHEE - Tucked away in the bottom level of the Midtown Building at the corner of Wenatchee and Orondo Avenues is a business you may never have a reason to go into yourself. But if you do, you’ll quickly find out why Serve Wenatchee Valley is still a bustle of people coming and going all day.

That’s because Serve Wenatchee isn’t your ordinary business. No money changes hands inside their doors. The exchange is grace for gratitude.

That’s not to say there’s no mission at Serve Wenatchee. Their main aim is preventing homelessness, and they do it in a way that’s both multipurpose and ingenious: Multipurpose because their services provide immediate tangible benefits like food and clothing, and ingenious because they recognize that when one or more things are already taken care of — or at least helped with — it frees up resources for the person seeking aid to strive to pay their own way in terms of a place to live.

It sounds like a simple charity, and for all intents and purposes, it is. It’s privately funded by local organizations and individuals, it provides its services free of charge, and it’s a non-profit.

But behind the scenes, this is very much a business, and it benefits Wenatchee as a whole just the way other businesses do. The intricate network of partnerships that Serve Wenatchee maintains in order to fulfill its mission is extensive, from churches to local businesses to other outreach programs similar to its own. They all refer people to one another, and Serve Wenatchee, for its part, acts as an information clearinghouse for people looking for resources that Serve may not be able to provide.

The largest and first part of what the organization does is to provide food through its Fresh Hope Market, which is a food bank in name only. What they actually do is quite different from any food bank you might have seen in the past: They operate a real store. Where a standard food bank might look like a series of shelves that donated goods are stored on, from which you get whatever is available at the time you arrive, at the Fresh Hope Market, you shop like it’s a grocery store.

Families who qualify for help do so based on income and family size, and are allotted “points” they can use toward food at the Market. Those points act as currency in the Market. If you need peanut butter, for example, it costs 3 points. But in the Market, it’s not just whatever generic peanut butter is available. They have a full shelf of name-brand stuff, in creamy or extra crunchy, just like the grocery store.

Baby food? Zero points for that. “That’s free, because it’s for BABIES,” Intake and Communications Specialist Kim Cavanaugh explains as she shows us through the store.

The food comes from all kinds of sources. The larger food bank that the Fresh Hope Market works with is called Second Harvest, and they, in turn, have partnerships with many grocery stores. The Market here in Wenatchee has in their cold section right now prepared snack packs and some pastries from Safeway, fresh fruit from the Plaza Super Jet, and meats that are frozen immediately when they get them from both stores.

There’s not just food at the Market. They also have laundry and dish soap, diapers, shampoo, and other essential items. But the aisles are mostly full of food. Beans, soup, boxed mac and cheese, cereals, juices, sodas, pasta, bread and even baking supplies are all on display.

The dignity that comes with being able to shop like anyone else goes hand in hand with the personal nature of food itself. Food is vital. Food transcends differences in language, culture, socioeconomic status and politics. Food is caring for others. And remember, getting your family fed is just the first part of what Serve Wenatchee does: They do it so the families they help won’t get evicted from their homes. When your food budget is out of the way, you can spend your money keeping a roof over your head.

There is some worry among Serve Wenatchee’s staffers that a surge could be coming of people in need. Shelley Monda, the Office & Operations Manager, discusses national politics for just a moment, saying “With all the cuts to federal funding in so many areas, we’re extra glad to be here, but we hope the donations keep coming in like they have.”

The old adage is that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and nowhere can that be seen more plainly than when hard-working families who fall just short of scraping by are given a hand so that they can keep the one thing necessary for staying in their job — staying in their home.

When it comes to fulfilling missions, for Serve Wenatchee, business has been good.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media