The third Thursday of the month is one of the busiest for Harvest for the Hungry food pantry when they give out food to those in need from 5-8 p.m.

With many things shut down, the food pantry has stayed open but made a few changes.

The first is that no one will be coming into the building. Rather, they are asked to drive through the alleyway behind the building, between Fourth and Fifth streets. People are asked to enter from Center Street by the courthouse.

“I don’t think it is going to bad,” said Diane Porter, the director of Harvest for the Hungry.

She said they had previously only allowed for four clients at a time in the building lobby and workers, rather than clients, used keyboards to check in.

“What we did find is that five people that came in were really uncomfortable,” she said. “So, that’s why I decided to do the drive thru thing and see how that works.”

The workers will take the buggy out the back door of the building and bring it out to the waiting vehicle.

Porter said she got permission from the city to try this out.

“If we stay with the drive thru model, I am probably going to have to have police presence there to help with traffic,” she said, adding that they would make changes if they have to and that this how they would probably doing it this way for a while to limit exposure to the coronavirus.

“We’ll see, it is an experiment,” she said.

Also, because of the price and availability, they will not be giving out paper products this time.

“We are well stocked, but we are not giving out toilet paper,” Porter said.