North Canton Cares Pantry opens new location

In partnership with The Repository, every Monday, Stark Community Foundation highlights positive happenings in our community. Here’s to Good News Mondays!

For the past six years, parishioners of The Summit Church would spend time faithfully stacking their chairs after Sunday morning church services each month to make space for the North Canton Cares Pantry to set up shop and serve neighbors in need. This month, a new chapter began for the pantry as it opened the doors to its new, designated space at 5948 Mayfair Road.

The North Canton Cares Pantry is a partnership between the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, MissionView Church, North Canton City School District and The Summit Church driven by a single goal: to distribute food, free of charge, to North Canton individuals and families in need.

Instead of handing out pre-packed bags, its guests shop like they are at a grocery store. This allows families to pick and choose foods they’ll actually use — creating less waste, more dignity and happier meals at home. 

“At the beginning of 2025, we were forced to find a permanent location when the building where we stored our food was sold,” said Jeff Dayton, president of the North Canton Cares Pantry board. “We have spent the last six years transporting our food back and forth from various warehouse spaces to The Summit Church. Our new pantry space allows us to have our food warehouse and our free food pantry in the same location.”

On the second and fourth Mondays of each month, guests are assigned designated times to shop at the new location. Veterans and military families shop between 10 a.m. and noon, moms and those needing to get back for school pickup shop between 1 and 3 p.m. and anyone else in need shops from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Guests must live in ZIP codes 44720, 44721, 44685, 44718, 44709 or 44630 and present a photo ID and a piece of mail with their name and address as proof of residency. Any veteran or service member can utilize the pantry, regardless of their ZIP code.

Over the last six months, the pantry has experienced an organizational upgrade alongside its physical transformation. A new board of directors was recently welcomed and Matt Ile, a retired teacher and principal from North Canton, was hired to serve as the pantry’s executive director. 

In 2024, the North Canton Cares Pantry helped 700 veterans and military families and more than 2,800 additional North Canton families. Volunteers donated over 4,200 hours of time to keep the pantry operations running and more than 50,000 pounds of food was distributed.

While still in North Canton, but closer to the city of Green, Jackson Township and Lake Township, the location of the new space gives the organization the opportunity to expand its territory and serve more families in the future. 

“That first pantry [in 2019], we started by serving 16 families,” said Dayton. “Since then, we have served over 15,000 families. We are deeply thankful for great partnerships with businesses that support us financially, provide food, provide volunteers or hold food drives for us. We could not do what we do without the support of our great community. We are loving our community one family at a time.” 

Learn more at www.nccpantry.com.