New food hub on Chicago's West Side going above and beyond to support residents

CHICAGO - A new kind of food bank just opened on Chicago's West Side where the mantra is "food is medicine."

Bethel New Life, a community wellness hub in the Austin neighborhood, welcomed the addition of a new food pantry Friday. 

They want to make sure that residents nearby have fresh, healthy food to eat, but this new effort goes beyond just feeding people. Bethel Daily Bread came about through a partnership with Amazon, Amazon Fresh and Rush University Medical Center. 

If someone has diabetes at the new pantry, they can get prescribed the right food and recipes here to help with that. 

Also, the staff at Bethel will use technology to make sure people get access to things that they need such as a primary care physician, transportation, daycare and workforce training, all with the goal of addressing food insecurity plus medical and social needs on Chicago's West Side.

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The opening comes at a time when fresh food is just too expensive for too many people. 

"Every item in the bag is very expensive for a person who's on a fixed income, a person whose finances are very low, and they're struggling already," said Ald. Emma Mitts (37th). "So the least thing we can do is to try and help. So thank you for doing that, and I also think Amazon and Rush for participating because health care is going to be the number one issue here that we have to deal with coming out of the pandemic."

While budgets are strained, especially this time of year, through that partnership with Amazon, the service has adopted about three dozen families who will come to pick up their boxes of food and also receive bags of Christmas presents. They have got a holiday meal here set up, as well. 

The new food pantry will be open three days a week to start but they do have plans to expand that in the future.