By Jon Huang
It’s Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the Fresh Start Center as the morning fog parts on the eastern plains. At the back entrance, volunteers unload food from truck beds to carts, rolling them onto the standing scale before sorting them on the shelves.
Inside, a volunteer bags the latest donations from Crumbl Cookies. Opening the walk-in fridge, one is greeted by twin towers of day-old Little Caesars Pizza. Today’s produce offerings include potatoes, onions, honeydew, pineapple, carrots, celery and avocados.
Hanging above the produce stand is this sign: “I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I discovered that most people die of natural causes.”
FSC began in the mid-2000s as the High Plains Helping Hands Food Pantry and was renamed the Fresh Start Center in 2019. The pantry’s 1,800-square-foot building is owned by Mountain Springs Church, but the organization is an independent non-profit with three employees and a board of directors.
For FSC executive director Grant Winger, who moved from the Chicago suburbs to Colorado and began at the Fresh Start Center in 2019, it’s been a journey in the making. Winger was rooted in food growing up in the small, rural farming town of Sheffield, Illinois, where his grandpa and father ran the Royal Super Mart grocer. It was here that Winger worked as a butcher.
After college, Winger had a nine-year corporate marketing career at Jimmy John’s selling its “freaky fast” sandwiches. Back then, he had an ethos that he carries with him today.
“Don’t just be in your community, be a part of your community.”
The large number of food insecurity nonprofits is well-known within El Paso County. From large parachurch organizations like Crossfire Ministries to smaller neighborhood pantries run by advocacy groups, this trend has led to increasing competition for the same resources, which has led to a fragmented support system that has made resource navigation more challenging. In response, suppliers like Care and Share Food Bank have prioritized multi-agency collaborative efforts to maximize limited resources, and this past year, the El Paso County Food Security Working Group formed to foster collaboration among existing programs.
Winger is part of this latter initiative and so his awareness of both food waste and organizational disconnect has guided his approach. When he first joined FSC, he gleaned wisdom from other food pantries while sowing his own community partnerships. To that end, FSC focuses on serving ZIP codes on the city outskirts with an emphasis on eastern El Paso County, including Falcon.
From the “Welcome” sign donated by the artist who designed for Trader Joe’s to the health and hygiene products donated by a local influencer, the FSC is a living testament to community collaboration.
Each person that uses FSC registers and is allowed to shop once a month as an individual or for their family. One can choose to have someone shop for them or shop themselves, alongside a volunteer.
“We don’t want to create dependencies on us, but we also want to be there to still help the families and still give a decent amount of food … to those that we help get through that week,” Winger said. “There are about 106 different food insecurity organizations throughout El Paso County, which means if you need to go somewhere else, that’s OK. We just want to see that you get fed but we don’t want to be the only one that’s coming alongside to go through and help out with those neighbors.”
Beyond food, FSC provides volunteer-based nursing services for resource connection and co-pay assistance for health care expenses helping the uninsured, underinsured, and working poor alike. In 2020, when the program started, FSC provided around 290 pairs of glasses to neighbors.
“The fun fact about that is every single one of them drove here,” Winger said.
FSC capitalizes on corporate food waste, partnering with King Soopers, Safeway, Costco and Sprouts to rescue edible produce and prepared foods otherwise destined for disposal. FSC has several restaurant partnerships, including Chick-fil-A. Mountain Springs Church’s Aquaponics garden provides a year-round supply of fresh lettuces, and partnerships with local farmers on the eastern plains provide additional eggs and meat. FSC is also a pickup site for the USDA’s Commodity Supplemental Food Program for Seniors, which provides monthly food boxes for low-income seniors — it is currently working with 120 households.
Winger has channeled his corporate hustle and skills to build an ecosystem of community partnerships with whom to share FSC’s story and to help others see the greater picture.
“We’re thankful for the community that we have, because we realize we couldn’t do it without Falcon and the Springs and all of our churches that we partner with,” he said. “All the organizations, businesses and individuals truly do make a big impact on what happens here. We couldn’t do it without the entire network of support that we have.
Volunteers pick up, sort and stock the food throughout the week. Throughout the year, FSC has coordinated donation and fundraising efforts with local churches and civic organizations. It recently received a see-through fridge from a closing business. A recent food drive through the local Boy Scouts chapter brought in 7,000 pounds. FSC distributed 405,000 pounds of food last year and is supported with a combination of charitable grants and private donations.
The majority of the FSC’s 85 volunteers are retired seniors in the surrounding community but include all ages and walks of life, from a former Chick-fil-A mascot to a Northrup Grumann retiree. While FSC is a Christian organization that draws volunteers from around 15 churches in the area, specific affiliations aren’t necessary to either receive services or volunteer.
Winger also encourages folks to reach out to inquire about assistance or explore potential partnerships, whether it’s donating extra eggs or produce from home gardens or pitching new ideas to help those they serve.
“We’d love to … see how we can go through and support the community where we live because what we see is that a lot of who we serve are the neighbors that you may not realize actually utilize our resources,” he said.
The contrast between his previous corporate life traveling the country and his current local focus hasn’t been lost on Winger, and yet his time at FSC has been a fruitful time of aligning his work with direct service to his local community.
“While it’s not nearly as comfortable of a lifestyle,” he said. “I feel so much better about the work that I do to truly help out the community. It’s giving back much, much more to see that my neighbors don’t have to worry about that next meal.”
Donate to FSC’s Thanksgiving Turkey Drive Oct 27-Nov 20:
Drop off locations @ MVEA E. 11140 E. Woodman, Falcon
Christian Brothers 7699 McLaughlin Rd., Peyton,
Fresh Start Center 7375 Adventure Way, Colorado Springs
Contact grant@freshstartcenter.com for additional details.
For hours and contact information, check out:
https://www.freshstartcenter.com
Grant Winger’s “office” sits in a tight corner of the main shopping area. What it lacks in privacy, it makes up for in functionality, leaving him accessible and connected.
“Help us see behind their words and what they are feeling.”
Prior to opening, a brief group devotional focuses on how people often mask their distress in different ways.
FSC outfitted a trailer behind the building for additional year-round storage space.
