The History of Nourish Up

Fifty Years of Caring for Our Neighbors 

By Sue Bruce and Suzanne Lowe 

After fighting hunger in Charlotte-Mecklenburg for more than  four decades, Loaves & Fishes, a network of emergency food pantries, and Friendship Trays, the primary Meals on Wheels program for Mecklenburg County, joined forces in 2021 to better address all levels of food insecurity in our community. Both organizations were founded by strong women in their faith communities who saw a need and decided to do something about it.  

The following is the story of each and how they merged to become the new organization, called Nourish Up, which provided groceries to  nearly 170,000  people and delivered meals to 143,736  in 2025. The Nourish Up mission is “to nourish our neighbors with food and compassion.” 

Loaves & Fishes 

Loaves & Fishes was  established  in 1975 at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Charlotte’s Dilworth neighborhood. Led by Virginia Sampson, a small group of church members came together to help hungry neighbors, as there was nothing in place to address food insecurity at the time. Loaves & Fishes opened its first pantry at Holy Comforter, and that first year, it fed 1,000 people.  

Virginia Sampson remembered, “As for money, we started in  1975, with none.” 

Loaves & Fishes expanded to  Statesville Avenue  Presbyterian  (SAP)  Church  with  a second pantry in 1982, followed by pantries at Calvary United Methodist Church and St. Giles Presbyterian Church in 1983 (where the first central phone center was established to receive client referrals), and at First Presbyterian Church by 1984.  In the same year, Loaves & Fishes incorporated, hired its first Executive Director,  established  the first general board of directors, and opened administrative offices at Park Road Baptist  Church. Fred  Sanders,  SAP  Pantry Coordinator,  summed up his experience this way, “Once my father (Rev. Wilburn M. Sanders of Statesville Avenue  Presbyterian Church) got me to just come through the door, then it was all over for me. Volunteering with people who are suffering from food deficiencies – you can never forget it.” 

Hurricane Hugo devastated the Charlotte area in 1989, increasing the community’s need for help.  Loaves & Fishes  purchased  its first delivery truck, nicknamed  Loafie,  with donations received after the hurricane. The first two-day emergency “mini” pantries were opened at Crisis Assistance Ministry and Department of Social Services in an effort to help social services programs get clients a temporary supply of food until they  could  get to a full-size pantry. As the need continued to grow, Loaves & Fishes answered the call by expanding into a network of emergency food pantries throughout Mecklenburg County. Administrative offices were also moved to St. Luke’s Lutheran Church on Park Road. 

In 1992, Loaves & Fishes joined  forces  with the Mecklenburg County Council of Boy Scouts of America to combine the  Charlotte Has Heart  food drive with the annual  Scouting for Food  drive.  

The Loaves & Fishes logo was  designed  pro bono  by Price McNabb Advertising Agency in 1996. 

By 2005, the number of people fed had increased to 69,137 through 16 pantries, which employed five full-time staff, two part-time staff, and  more than  600 volunteers. 

The roof at the Mt. Carmel Pantry collapsed in 2007, just after the facility closed for the day. 

By 2009, Loaves & Fishes surpassed 100,000 neighbors fed for the first time, providing groceries to an astounding  102,638 clients. 

After 36 years of providing bags of nutritionally balanced groceries, Loaves & Fishes introduced the Client Choice shopping model in pantries in 2011. This was pivotal because it provided neighbors with the dignity of being able to make selections according to their families’ needs and preferences.    

Due to the lingering effects of the 2008 recession, Loaves & Fishes fed a  record  126,803 people in 2012. They moved their office space from St. Luke’s Lutheran Church to an expanded warehouse at 648 Griffith Road. 

The first refrigerated truck,  aptly  dubbed  Big  Loafie, was  purchased  in 2013 and  greatly improved  the delivery of perishable food to local pantries throughout Mecklenburg County.   Publix began making monthly donations of  30,000 pounds  of food that year.  

Loaves & Fishes joyfully celebrated their 40^th  anniversary with an event called  Throwin’ Back to the 70s in 2015, which included disco dancing, a silent auction, a low country boil, and craft beer. Meteorologist Larry Sprinkle emceed this “groovy” event.  

In 2016, after 28 years at the helm,  Executive Director Beverly Howard retired, and Tina Postel became the Executive Director of Loaves & Fishes. “We take  great pride  in saying we have never turned a hungry person away because we  didn’t  have enough food. I hope that never changes,” reflected Beverly Howard in her last newsletter article,  The Fish Net, before retiring that year.  

In 2018, Loaves & Fishes partnered with Atrium Health and Novant Health, along with the Mecklenburg County Health Department, as part of the One Charlotte Health Alliance. This collaboration was formed to address barriers to health care access, provide scholarships for education in the health care fields, screen for food insecurity, and serve as the prescription for health.  

The COVID-19 Pandemic  in 2020  shut down Loaves & Fishes pantries. In response, the  innovative team  converted to mobile pantry food distribution and began  utilizing  volunteers to deliver groceries directly to homes.  Grocery client numbers increased from 1,100  per  week in March 2020 to 3,700  per  week in April 2020 – just one month! 

Instacart partnered with Loaves & Fishes in 2021 to create a new online ordering platform, Food Storm, that brought the dignity of choice to the  Grocery  Home  Delivery program.    

Friendship Trays 

Friendship Trays was founded a year after Loaves & Fishes, in 1976, when volunteers from four Elizabeth neighborhood churches (St. Martin’s Episcopal, St. John’s Baptist, Hawthorne Lane United Methodist, and Caldwell Presbyterian), led by Ann Elliot, purchased diet-specific meals from nearby Presbyterian and Mercy Hospitals. 

“At that time, another program was being  initiated. The founder, a long-time acquaintance of mine, was Virginia Sampson. Loaves & Fishes and Friendship Trays were different, but equally valid in their efforts to fight hunger,”  said  Ann Elliot, Founder of Friendship Trays. 

These meals were delivered to elderly residents in the Elizabeth  and  Chantilly neighborhoods who could no longer attend the weekly church luncheons due to health issues. They began with five volunteers working and delivering from the basement of Caldwell Presbyterian Church. The offices were  located  at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church.  

By 1985, Friendship Trays had expanded to provide 250 meals per day,  purchased  from neighboring hospitals for delivery throughout the city. “The mapping system was that one of us would go sit at this huge map that we had on the wall and say, ‘turn left, go three blocks, turn right. You know,  we’d  map it manually,”  described  Lucy Bush Carter, Executive Director of Friendship Trays. 

In 1989, Friendship Trays launched a capital campaign and upfitted the kitchen at St. Martin’s so they could prepare their own meals rather than purchase meals from health care facilities. The new space opened in honor of Ann Elliot, Lalla Gribble, and Tom Bradbury (the three volunteers who were instrumental in developing the program) and enabled Friendship Trays to serve 350 meals per day, with the help of more than  1,300 volunteers. They eventually exhausted the capacity of that space, so a board member, Bruce Parker, and his wife, Laura, offered a 5,000-square-foot warehouse at 2401 Distribution Street for  relocating  the kitchen, which was dedicated in March 1996. 

Friendship Trays and Loaves & Fishes joined with NC Harvest, a local perishable food rescue program, to form the Nutrition Coalition in 1996. The group’s first project was  operating  a joint food ministry in Davidson. 

The Community Culinary School of Charlotte (CCSC) opened in 1997, in the same building as Friendship Trays on Distribution Street. The two entities partnered so that people facing employment challenges could receive instruction by learning to cook from trained chefs while preparing meals for Friendship Trays. This “smart partnership” between the two nonprofit organizations was a win-win situation. By 2004, Friendship Trays was serving  meals to  more than 700 people each weekday. 

One thing lacking was access to fresh produce.  Partnering with Slow Food Charlotte, Friendship Trays created a demonstration garden with raised beds made from pallets and grew a large variety of vegetables for many years.  Wanting to  expand  that concept, they applied for funding from Wells Fargo and The Women’s Impact Fund and, in 2009, grew to include an urban farm called Friendship Gardens. Friendship Gardens also grew food at The Charlotte Correctional Institution at this time, by invitation from the warden. Under the direction of Henry Owen, the program director, the  inmates  helped grow the produce as part of their work program. They were also able to cultivate  some of the  vegetables for themselves and their families. Seedlings were also started at Jail North. 

In 2014, Friendship Trays was  permitted  to plow up a previously neglected corner of a back lot and refurbish a defunct greenhouse at Garinger High School, which became the hub of Friendship Gardens, part of the Urban Farm Learning Center. It was an integral arm of Friendship Trays. They both taught healthy growing practices and directly provided fresh produce for the meals delivered.  

By 2018, the program had grown to a network of 107 gardens yielding  12,358 pounds  of produce! “It brings a different [kind of volunteer] profile to us. The garden part versus the meal delivery part and the prep part. But  it’s  all tied together… we want more people to have access to good, healthy food. And  that’s  an initiative that crosses programmatically among the non-profits in Charlotte that deal with hunger and feeding people, to make access to healthy food more readily available,” noted Lucy Bush Carter in a 2019 interview. The farm at Garinger High School continues today,  mainly growing  produce with a longer shelf life, such as sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and herbs like garlic, oregano, and parsley. They offer hydroponics, aquaponics, educational opportunities, internships, and transitional employment.  

To help address the loss of volunteers during the pandemic, the Charlotte Fire and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Departments stepped in to deliver meals to Friendship Trays recipients so no one would go without nutritious food.  

Two Become One 

Throughout the history of both organizations, one theme stands out: recipients  value  human interaction with volunteers as much as the meal  and groceries  they receive. Volunteers tell stories of finding a neighbor on the floor or in need of medical attention and getting the help they need. The relationships developed are among the most rewarding reasons people keep volunteering.  “Sometimes I think the nutrients from the brief interaction are more important than food. I know they are….,” said  Lucy Bush Carter. That volunteer may be the only visitor they have.  

In 2021, Loaves & Fishes and Friendship Trays merged to become Loaves & Fishes/Friendship Trays, Inc., with Tina Postel named CEO. The staff wore purple shirts with the new brand—a blend  of the primary colors of the former organizations—red for Loaves & Fishes and blue for Friendship Trays.  

The two organizations, which had  operated  differently and had distinct personalities, moved into a single  building. This  process was described by staff as a “new, blended-family house.” The merging of both business names was challenging to say or write.  Two names  also  felt  divisive when we wanted to be the  one  source for food in Charlotte for people who needed it.  

The most fantastic aspect of this challenging merger process is that nobody left.  

Everyone stayed.  

That is a testament to the commitment of the many individuals at the heart of the organization who share the organization’s greater vision that we are a “community that accepts no excuses for our neighbors going hungry.” We will continue our mission to “nourish our neighbors with food and compassion.” 

To remedy this,  marketing professionals at Wray Ward led a series of focus groups, surveys, and interviews with donors, staff, volunteers, and hundreds of key community stakeholders about what the organization, mission, and programs meant to them. The word that came up consistently and repeatedly throughout the process was “nourish.” Also, many  indicated  that the new title should include an action word to  represent  the  hard work our volunteers put in, as well as the promise of offering a hand  up  rather than a handout to our neighbors. Some were concerned that the Biblical reference to the Loaves & Fishes would be  lost but  were reassured by the leadership that it would not.  The left side of our logo  represents  the letter N, for our neighbors; the right side is the letter U, for our staff. The loaf of bread in the middle is a nod to our important history. It also  represents  the sharing and receiving of food. From this painstaking process,  Nourish Up was born under its new name. 

Through a $22.8 million capital campaign supported by the Charlotte community, Nourish Up  purchased  and renovated a former Sears warehouse  located  at 901 Carrier Drive in 2022. This 90,000-square-foot facility in the Thomasboro-Hoskins neighborhood is now known as the  Hunger Hub. It provides 10 times the amount of cold food storage, an on-site client-choice food pantry, a dedicated volunteer space, a  10,000 ft. Meals on Wheels commercial kitchen, a teaching kitchen and conference center, ample meeting rooms, and space for partner agencies and more.   

Nourish Up celebrated the 50^th Anniversary Golden Gala in  March,  2025  with  more than  450 guests at the Hub, featuring The Right to Party band and  its  own warehouse coordinator Jay Gillard on the drums. Here, the theme was gratitude and joy as  all  guests  remembered  and honored  the numerous  people who have served and been served over the past half-century. Nourish Up staff and operations moved into the Hunger Hub in April, with the Grand Opening in  June,  2024.  Immediately, the staff  began nourishing  neighbors in need.  

Nourish Up  Client  Choice pantries are available Monday through Saturday across Mecklenburg County, where neighbors can choose nutritious foods that are  just right  for their families. They receive a week’s worth of food, enough for 21 nutritious meals for each family member listed on their referral.  

Clients  are required to  obtain a referral from a social worker, medical professional, clergy, or human services agency  in order to  qualify to receive food. Groceries can be received up to 12 times in a rolling calendar  year.  The  referring professional can add refills if the client  requires  more groceries. Referrals can be tailored to a specific health need, such as pregnancy or  a chronic  medical condition. 

In May 2026,  Nourish Up  hosted  its  first Luncheon of Hope in the Hunger Hub, welcoming a sold-out crowd of more than 500 to hear Coach Dawn Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks, and  NY Times Bestselling  author of  Uncommon Favor.  And in June 2026, we hosted our 10,000 square foot Meals on Wheels kitchen grand opening,  with the Charlotte Hornets naming the kitchen with a $1 million gift – it is now known as the Home Court Kitchen, presented by the Charlotte Hornets.  At the time of this publishing, the kitchen  is fully staffed, replete with  a palpable  energy,  and  preparing  hundreds of  beautiful  delicious  meals every day.  

Our Core Values 

Neighborly, because we believe that healthy food is a basic human right, and we are going to make sure that our community is well fed. Every neighbor is worthy of dignity, kindness, and connection. It  is  more  than a mindset:  it’s  a daily practice that shows up in every part of our organization. 

Our volunteers serve without expectation of praise – just a deep desire to help. Staff go  above and beyond  their job descriptions, showing up for each other across departments, events, and shortages. We offer more than food – we offer warmth and a sense of belonging. Smiles, wellness checks, and thoughtful conversations remind our neighbors that  they’re  seen and valued.   

Service-Minded,  because we believe we are called to be of service to others, and that there is joy in what we do. Every move we make is done with compassion, commitment, and mission. We apply our exceptional skills and talents to go  above and beyond  for each other and our neighbors in need.  

We collaborate with partner agencies and volunteers across Mecklenburg County to ensure that our programs meet neighbors in the times and places that work, no matter the conditions. Always forward-thinking, we remove barriers and put dignity first in food access. 

Innovative, because at Nourish Up, we approach challenges and trends with curiosity and a bias towards meaningful action. Rather than accepting limitations, we  seek  creative, efficient, and scalable solutions that push beyond conventional thinking. We are driven by listening to and understanding our neighbors. 

We integrate feedback and leverage partnerships and the latest technology as we strive to create effective and adaptive systems that evolve our community’s needs while  remaining  good stewards of our resources.  

Experimentation is encouraged, data is vital, failure is a learning tool, and ideas are embraced and nurtured from the ground up. Innovation is embedded in how we work every day.    

Leadership Throughout the Years