Campus Cupboard

Food Security

The Campus Cupboard is located on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union. It is open Tuesday-Friday from 10:00am-5:00pm and on Saturdays from 10:00am – 2pm. All KU students, staff, and faculty are welcome!

Please email cupboard@ku.edu if you are interested in volunteering or have any questions.

Our History

The Campus Cupboard was originally founded in 2009 as a CCO program named Daily Bread that partnered with Just Food and the Ecumenical Campus Ministries (ECM) as a student initiative to develop a food pantry for KU students, where it eventually adopted the moniker, the Campus Cupboard. In March of 2015, the Campus Cupboard was relocated to the Westwood House in the Lutheran Campus Ministries (LCM). In the 2016-2017 academic year, the Executive Director of the KU Center for Community Outreach surveyed second-, third- and fourth-year undergraduates as part of their honors thesis and found that 54% of respondents could be considered food insecure under U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines, with 35% exhibiting very low food security, the department’s most severe category of food insecurity. This realization initiated an immense effort to expand the Campus Cupboard’s partnership with Just Food to expand its services on KU’s campus.

In September of 2018, the Campus Cupboard was successfully opened, in partnership with KU Student Affairs, in the Kansas Union on the fourth floor, where it currently serves all KU students and faculty. This evolution was a prime example of the University’s response to food insecurity, which had been driven by students, but was increasingly backed by administrative buy-in. Largely responsible for the move were Katie Phalen and Insia Zufer, who were the Co-Directors of the CCO in the academic year 2017-2018. During Phalen and Zufer’s tenure, the CCO also joined a new effort headed by KU Student Affairs, the Food for Jayhawks committee made up of staff, faculty, students and community members. The group’s main charge is ending food insecurity on campus by improving student access to healthy food and food resources with collaborations among KU departments and community agencies. Today, the Campus Cupboard remains a student-led initiative that operates in coordination with Just Food and KU Student Affairs to address food insecurity on KU’s campus.

Program Coordinators: Hannah Chern, Amy Qiang, and Mia Willingham