This US college pantry aims to help students struggling to buy food

Plinske (right) and Geraghty checking out the new VCentials grocery mart during an unveiling at VC's west campus in Orlando. Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS

Valencia College students short of money and worried they cannot afford food can now shop for free at a new, on-campus food pantry designed to look like a small store and offer stigma-free shopping.

The VCentials store replaces a smaller, closet-style pantry on Valencia’s West Orange County campus in Orlando, Florida in the United States. It aims to deal with a sobering statistic: In a 2021 survey, 40% of Valencia’s students reported struggling to afford the food they needed.