For years, Dave Poniatowski had no trouble managing his household budget. Then came a devastating triple whammy: two years without steady full-time work, soaring living costs and mounting debt.
Suddenly the 54-year-old father of three from Bailey, Colorado, found himself on the brink of a financial crisis. When a neighbor suggested he visit a food pantry run by his local church, Poniatowski resisted.
"I didn't really consider myself to be somebody who would need a food bank," said Poniatowski, who even launched a high-country wildfire mitigation business to keep creditors at bay.
What began as a reluctant first visit has become a weekly routine as his family recovers financially.
Poniatowski is not alone. While overall inflation has cooled, years
of compounding price hikes are taking a heavy toll on paychecks and unemployment checks, driving many that never expected to need help to food pantries.
According to the Capital Area Food Bank’s annual Hunger Report, 1 in 4 middle-income families experienced food insecurity over the past year, marking the largest increase in need among middle-class households.
Feeding America’s latest Map the Meal Gap report underscores the strain. Food-insecure Americans now report needing an extra $23.16 per person every week just to cover basic nutrition. The latest Feeding America food bank survey shows that about half of responding food banks reported seeing an average 15% year-over-year increase in people served.
Overall food bank demographics haven't fundamentally shifted. Most visitors remain deeply low-income, including 95% of the clients at the pantry Poniatowski frequents, according to its executive director John Obrecht.
Yet pantries are increasingly serving households above the poverty line who have been buffeted by a financial setback. By stocking up on essentials like eggs, milk, bread and meat at the LifeBridge Food Pantry on Saturdays, Poniatowski says he has cut his monthly grocery bill from $650 to $272, which has helped stabilize his family's finances after he secured a new position in software sales.
“It’s been a godsend," he said. "Our situation has changed for the better but we're still digging ourselves out of a big debt hole.”
From temporary stopgap to daily survival
An emergency pandemic response has become a daily coping strategy for some families, says Elaine Waxman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute.
According to the USDA, U.S. food insecurity jumped from 10.2% to 13.5% between 2021 and 2023 − the largest increase since the Great Recession. While food insecurity rose twice as fast for households below the poverty line, the overall surge was driven by Americans above it because they make up most of the population.
Though pandemic relief measures have expired, grocery prices remain near record highs. Low-income households are hardest hit, but the Urban Institute’s 2025 Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey shows rising distress among moderate-income groups.
"There's always been a not insignificant part of the population who turns to charitable food as a coping strategy when their budgets just don't cover their basic needs," Waxman said. "What we have noticed is that charitable food use for the last few years is persistently elevated and certainly higher than pre-COVID."
Driving this elevated demand is the stark reality of household accounting: Groceries are one of the few flexible line items in a tight budget.
"Your food budget is the one thing you can adjust," Waxman said. "You can't really not pay your full rent for very long if you want to keep your place. Your car payment is not going to get adjusted. So food is one of those places that people cut back on."
So families frequently charge groceries to credit cards or "buy now, pay later" services. While manageable in the short term, many quickly fall behind on minimum payments, compounding immediate food insecurity with long-term debt. When credit lines max out, families often borrow from friends and family or sell possessions before they turn to community resources, Waxman said.
Even then, some are hesitant to seek help. Stigma and public misconceptions breed shame while newly struggling households often don't know where to turn. Work schedules that conflict with pantry hours, long travel distances in rural areas and dietary restrictions add even more obstacles.
"Particularly if people are newly experiencing financial stress, they may not be familiar with the resources in their community," Waxman said. "Part of it is stigma, a sense of shame that 'I'm not able to feed my family in the way that I would want.'"
Overcoming stigma to keep food on the table
For two decades, Cara Arnold, a 40-year-old Dayton, Ohio mother of three worked on the front lines of healthcare advocacy, building support networks for vulnerable children until a merger eliminated her role.
"It’s the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done," Arnold said. "What makes the job loss hit hard is figuring out how I continue to pursue my passions and support my family."
Her expertise navigating healthcare systems took on personal urgency when her eldest daughter developed a severe cellular energy deficit following a bout of strep throat and pneumonia.
Today, her daughter is defying the odds, graduating high school magna cum laude and recently starting college. But specialized medical care has placed heavy demands on the household budget as Arnold searches for her next role.
To support her family and assist her sister’s household, Arnold turned to local food rescue pantries. The transition from healthcare provider to pantry visitor was jarring.
"When you’re in a helping profession, you feel like you shouldn’t necessarily need those services or that there’s people who need them more," she said. "But at the end of the day, you look at your family, you put their needs first and you say, 'Nothing matters more than them and you ask for help.' And maybe that comes easier when you're facing a decision between groceries and life-saving medication."
Her motto? "Full house, full bellies, fullest heart."
At local food pantries distributing same-day produce and surplus goods, Arnold has come up with some creative culinary routines. Because her daughter requires a strict gluten-free diet, she uses recipe mobile apps to combine donated items such as edamame pasta, fresh kale, Italian sausage and tomato sauce into nutritious family meals.
"When I think about everything we’ve been through and how fragile it all is, the best I can hope for is we have plenty of tomorrows ahead to offer the kindness we’ve been shown to someone else," Arnold said.
A demographic shift or deepening crisis?
Second Harvest Heartland is the second-largest food bank in the country by pounds of food delivered. Amid federal cuts to SNAP and the rising cost of living, its chief external relations officer Zach Rodvold says food pantries in Minnesota are on pace for a fifth straight record-breaking year.
"There is nowhere to go to get free gas or rent, but for most Minnesotans, there is a food shelf in their community where they can get free food when they need it," Rodvold said. "Many of the people coming to food shelves for the first time do not qualify for SNAP, yet their income is not sufficient to cover their household's basic needs. When they're able to save money on groceries, they're putting that savings into paying their rent or mortgage or paying for health-related expenses or other critical needs."
Rodvold said he doesn't have data on how many are first-time visitors. "What we know for sure, however, is that people are coming to food shelves who never expected to be there," he said.
Despite these stories of strain above the poverty line, researchers say the underlying demographics of food bank users have not changed.
Craig Gundersen, a professor at Baylor University who studies food insecurity, says that about 13% of households in the U.S. experience food insecurity annually but only about 7% visit pantries. Of those visiting pantries, they are much more likely to be low-income in comparison to the broader food insecure population.
When food prices surge, "it is mainly low-income families visiting more often or even visiting for the first time. In general, we don't see a large increase in higher-income families going to food pantries," Gundersen said.
How have grocery prices changed? Check out USA TODAY's grocery prices tracker
Angela Rachidi, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says higher-income households typically exhaust other buffers first.
"Substituting food choices, eating out less, driving less, reducing other non-essentials like entertainment, travel, new purchases, delaying major projects, delaying upgrades, cutting services like hair salons, etc.," Rachidi told USA TODAY. "You would expect charity food to be among the last coping mechanisms."
From a six-figure salary to food banks
It was the last resort for Kristin Brandenburg.
Between 2022 and 2023, Brandenburg faced unimaginable loss: her grandparents, her only sibling and her mother all passed away in rapid succession.
"I had lost almost everyone," said Brandenburg, 44, whose father, a Vietnam War veteran, died when she was 19.
Then came another blow. In early 2025, she was laid off from her job as a tech client success manager. Months of job hunting yielded zero offers − not even for entry-level, minimum-wage positions paying $11 an hour. As her savings and unemployment benefits ran dry, her cupboards went bare.
Having organized community food drives in Denver during the pandemic, Brandenburg never imagined she would need help herself.
"That's not for me," she recalled telling a friend. "That's for other people."
"I need you to look in the mirror," her friend replied, "because you are the person who needs it."
Brandenburg put her tech background to work, building a custom database to track regional pantries, filtering by operating hours, eligibility rules and locations.
"I may be super poor but I'm really, really smart and I'm really, really resourceful," said Brandenburg who collects food weekly.
That resourcefulness extended to her kitchen. Using skills taught by her mother, she turned unconventional canned goods into gourmet meals such as cranberry-Dijon chicken drumsticks, green peppers stuffed with leftovers and what she calls "fridge cleanout went sideways soup."
Recently, after nearly two years out of work, the former six-figure corporate professional laced up steel-toed boots for a new job on a factory floor refurbishing heavy construction equipment.
Though back on a payroll, she remains deeply grateful for the community safety net that sustained her.
"I literally wouldn't have been able to eat without them (food banks)," Brandenburg said. "There was a solid eight months that I would not have had food."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Broke after bills: Middle-income America's food bank crisis
