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Ruby’s Pantry Austin is looking ahead to winter and making plans to continue distributions at the Mower County Fairgrounds with some changes. 

Currently, Ruby’s uses the Plager Building as a staging area but that building will be used for  Winter storage of boats and RVs and be unavailable. The Mower County Fair Board has  offered the use of other facilities and Ruby’s is expected to use them starting in November. Ruby’s Pantry Austin will also be experimenting with a slightly different way to distribute the food during  the Oct. 15 distribution. 

Instead of pre filling boxes and putting them in each vehicle, volunteers are going to try a station-to-station drive-thru. Each vehicle will start moving down the line with the trunk open and will stop at each station, where at each stop a volunteer will put the food item into the trunk. 

This will continue all the way for the 15 to 20 stations of items available. No boxes will be loaded into the vehicle, however, if a guest would like the volunteers to place the items in a box or basket they can put two empty laundry basket sized containers, for each bundle, in their vehicle and the items will be placed in their baskets, including boxes from past distributions at the fairgrounds. 

Ruby’s Austin is hoping to speed up the distribution and keep volunteers safe by doing most  of the work outside and that gives us an option for distributions in case we do not have access to a  building for staging. 

Ruby’s Pantry Austin is trying this method to see how it works and changes to the process will  be made if necessary. Guests are asked to follow instructions and will remain in their vehicle  during the distribution. 

Guests will enter the fairgrounds, as before, from 4th Avenue SW. A $20 per bundle exact cash donation is requested for each bundle with a maximum of two bundles per vehicle. Guests are asked to clean out a space in their vehicle for the items to be quickly and safely placed. Distribution  starts at 5 p.m.. 

Anyone with questions can call Grace Lutheran Church at 433-3445 and check out our Rubys  Pantry Austin Facebook page.