On February 4, 1986, Rev. Arthur Johnson, Rector of the Christ Episcopal Church, and Teen DeRocha, Outreach Chairman, wrote a letter to other churches in the Bay-Waveland area inviting them to a meeting on February 25th to discuss “pooling the resources” of all area churches in the establishment of a Bay-Waveland Food Bank. Prior to this, local churches would rotate a responsibility of providing money/food to those who came in search of need. The individual churches were always spread very thin trying to provide for the needy in Hancock County.

A resolution of incorporation was submitted to the Secretary of State on April 18, 1986, with Leontine C. DeRocha, Bea Gallegos, and Rev William Kelley, S.V.D. as incorporators and Evelyn Johnson as Secretary. The Charter of Incorporation for the Hancock County Food Pantry, Inc. was signed by the Governor on May 12 and issued by the Secretary of State on May 13, 1986. The Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi donated $1,500.00 in May, 1986 as “seed money” to open the Food Pantry.

The original Food Pantry was in the old Valena C. Jones School building at Old Spanish Trail and Bookter Street in Bay St. Louis. The director of Civil Defense, Bobby Boudin, was using space in the school, and found space in the gym for the Food Pantry to open on May 19, 1986. In the first few months of operation (May 19 through the  end of July, 1986), the Food Pantry provided food to 49 families and spent $492.97 to buy food to supplement that donated by area churches. The first refrigerator/freezer was donated in late June or early July of 1986 by way of a request in “Quotables by Cuevas” which ran in the Sea Coast Echo June 22, 1986.

When Bobby Boudin and Civil Defense moved to the old jail in the County Courthouse on Main Street in Bay St. Louis in May, 1987, the Food Pantry also relocated to the “hang mans room” in the old jail. Later when Civil Defense moved to the McDonald Building adjacent to the Mississippi Power Building on Hwy. 90, the Food Pantry also moved and operated from the rear portion of that building.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the McDonald Building on August 29, 2005. The Pantry resumed operation on February 1, 2006, in a temporary facility owned by the Hope Haven Center for Abused Children at 716 Herlihy Street in Waveland, MS. In February 2007, the Hancock County Board of Supervisors designated a piece of county-owned property on Highway 603 for the construction of a new building for the Pantry. Based in Pennsylvania, the Bucks-Mont Katrina Relief Project raised over $300,000 and constructed a new building for the Pantry on this site.  The Food Pantry began operations in this new facility on February 2, 2009.