What Makes Our Rural Food Bank Different—and Why Your Support Matters
Operating a food bank in a rural community like Upper Kittitas County is a deeply personal experience — for our shoppers, our volunteers, and our staff.
If you’re looking for food assistance in Upper Kittitas County, The HopeSource Food Bank is more than just a place to pick up groceries. Located in the heart of Cle Elum, our rural food bank serves more than 100 households each week, offering free food, mobile deliveries, and a space where neighbors come together. Whether you live in Cle Elum, Roslyn, Ronald, Easton, or the surrounding areas, we’re here to help and to build a stronger community, one meal at a time.
What we offer is something unique: a sense of true community. Here, shoppers are neighbors, not numbers. That closeness means we don’t just give out food, we create a space where people connect, support each other, and feel seen.
In addition to food distribution, The HopeSource office in Cle Elum connects Upper County residents with the full range of HopeSource services: housing and rental assistance, energy assistance, home weatherization, transportation, life skills training, and youth recreation support. But beyond services, something even more vital happens here: community is formed.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, when we are open for full food distribution, our small waiting area often fills to capacity. In those moments, people aren’t just waiting, they are catching up, sharing burdens and solving problems together. Someone might offer a place to stay or advice on a home repair. It’s community in action.
The heart of the Upper County Food Bank is our volunteers. They are the ones who make this space feel so special. Every month, they contribute an average of 230 hours of their time. They come from all walks of life — retirees, shift workers, and other community members supported by their employers to give back. In some cases, our volunteers also are our shoppers. We see each other not just here, but at community events and local grocery stores. We are living life together.
People come to our Cle Elum office in all kinds of different ways, walking from nearby homes in Cle Elum or carpooling from Roslyn and Easton. Some take the Kittitas County Connector bus operated by HopeSource. For those who are homebound in the Upper County, the Upper County Food Bank offers mobile deliveries each week, and we work hard to understand those shoppers’ needs so we can best serve them. When snowy weather makes roads impassable, we are blessed with our community partners who help us ensure food still gets to the people who need it most.
Our greatest challenge is distance — from resources, from funding, from visibility. Many grants prioritize numbers, and in that race, we can fall short. But the need in Upper Kittitas County is no less urgent. Hunger easily hides down rural roads and long gravel driveways.
Still, running a rural food bank is different from operating one in a big city — not just in scale, but in spirit. Here, we do more than feed people. We build a network of care and compassion. Here in Upper Kittitas County, we are more than a food bank. We are a community serving each other, neighbor to neighbor.
There is a remarkable resilience in this community. When our shelves run low, the community always answers the call — through surprise food drives, Amazon wish list donations, or even a truckload of potatoes. Every summer, garden surplus becomes shared abundance. When we needed a walk-in cooler, a local attorney launched a matching donation drive to make it happen.
The HopeSource Upper County Office has always been strongly supported with donations of food and money and we are thankful for each person who contributes. With the changes coming this year and next in decreasing grant funding combined with the predicted increase in families in need, you can be part of compassionate neighbors who are dedicated to making sure the HopeSource services not only survive, they thrive.