Long lines greet volunteers at the Brewton Food Bank every Tuesday morning — and the lines are getting longer.

The food bank, located at First United Methodist Church, opens its doors every week to help those in the community who are in need.

“The Food Bank has been in Brewton for many years,” Karen Cottrell said. “I have volunteered to help with it for a number of years. It began as a place to get food in an emergency, but over the years it has become a necessity for a lot of families. We give the bags of food out every Tuesday, but a family only receives a bag of food each quarter. That’s not enough for them to live on for three months, but it helps.”

Volunteer Jim Bilder, another volunteer, the number of bags given out each quarter is slowly increasing every quarter.

“We give out about 360 bags of food per quarter,” Bilder said. “We depend on several organizations to supply the food and we certainly will take donations.”

Others, such as the Post Office food drive, and the churches around town are also bringing them food items.

“One problem we have is that we have to put the same things in each bag so no one would feel as if they didn’t get something that another person did,” Cottrell said.

Another volunteer, Anita Wall, has a list of items they include in each bag, canned spaghetti sauce, spaghetti noodles, Vienna sausage, Jiffy cornmeal muffin mix, boxed mac and cheese, grits, bag of Great Northern Beans, white rice, peanut butter, canned pork and beans, canned soup, canned tomatoes, canned vegetables and saltine crackers. Each bag recipient also gets a voucher of $10 to buy perishable items.

The bags are packed with food by David Crook. who said he has worked with the Food Bank for 30 years. He is the one who packs all those bags of food, puts them in a little red wagon and wheels them out to the people who are waiting for them. Cottrell said they couldn’t get along without him. For more information call the church or anyone who works with the Food Bank.