New Supermarket-Style Food Pantry Open On Upper East Side

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY – A new food pantry and resource center opened on the Upper East Side Thursday, offering food and assistance to those in need.

Run by a new nonprofit called the Urban Outreach Center, the site includes a supermarket-style food pantry that allows visitors the comfort of being able to choose from available foods, adding dignity and a sense of normalcy for people receiving fresh produce and healthy staples from the pantry.

The Urban Outreach Center is at 1745 1st Ave., between East 90th and 91st streets. While hours will expand after the new year, it is currently open Wednesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on the sidewalk in front of the building.

The location also includes community dinners on Tuesday evenings, offering hot, restaurant-quality meals to food-insecure families senior citizens and low-income New Yorkers.

There are also clothing rooms, mail distribution services and a job center.

"The Urban Outreach Center is committed to ending the hunger gap in East Harlem and the Upper East Side – providing our low-income neighbors with the healthy food they need, with the dignity they deserve," said The Rev. Jordan Tarwater, Executive Director of the Urban Outreach Center of NYC, in a prepared statement.

"We are so grateful for the warm reception from the neighborhood and the outpouring of support from those who share our vision that no parent, child, or senior citizen in NYC should struggle because they lack access to food or other basic resources."

The Urban Outreach Center is a new nonprofit created from the historic homeless services mission of Avenue Church NYC.