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Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry turning to community for help with rising costs

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Published  February 22, 2025 4:43pm EST
Pasco County
FOX 13 News

Food pantry in danger of closing

FOX 13's Jordan Bowen shares why the Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry is asking the community for help.

The Brief

    • The Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry is turning to the community for help after rising costs have made it tough to serve the 500 families that depend on them.
    • They have served more than five million meals since opening six years ago.
    • What started as a way to help seniors on fixed incomes afford food, has grown into a community-wide effort to help feed hundreds of hungry families.

LAND O'LAKES, Fla. - They've given out food and provided medical care to the community in Land O'Lakes for years, but they say rising rent prices are now forcing them out. 

The Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry has served more than 5 million meals since it opened 6 years ago. Now they're turning to the community for help to keep their mission going. 

They say they only have a few more days before they'll have to make some tough decisions.

What started as a way to help seniors on fixed incomes afford food, has grown into a community-wide effort to help feed hundreds of hungry families.

The Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry.

What they're saying:

"We did not just want to be a typical preaching ministry. We wanted a Malachi, which feeds the people, so we started off with just brown sack lunches," Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry Founder Clarence Johns said.

Johns and his son started the Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry 6 years ago with only one food vendor: Publix. 

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Now they have more than eight supplying the community with everything from non-perishable food to pet supplies to medical care.

"Once we started procuring the type of vendors that would give me product that I would feed to my family, or my children, or my mother, it became a bigger endeavor," Johns said.

They moved to this new location in Land O'Lakes a few years ago to keep up with the demand. On average, Johns says they have about 500 families come through once a month, but serving them may now be in jeopardy. 

The Father and Son Love Free Food Pantry.

Their rent is now double what they were paying a few years ago. They've applied for grants to offset the rising costs, but are still waiting to hear if they'll be approved.

In the meantime, Johns is turning to the community for solutions.

"We don't have a lot of time. We would literally just have to shut down now. We got behind because of the storms, and we had to repair some stuff and all that wasn't necessarily credited, but we had to open because we had damage or water damage, and we had to take care of it. So there's this kind of snowball effect," Johns said.

Johns says he has looked into relocating, but says closing up and then re-opening somewhere new would mean even more additional costs, so for now he's holding out hope they can gather enough donations to continue operating out of the same location.

"They've come as far south as Sarasota because our reputation is you get fresh fruits and vegetables, and it's worth the trip because I'm going to send you home with two $300 groceries. So we have impacted lives, we've changed lives," Johns said.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Jordan Bowen.

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