Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Ciera Ratliff, 4, takes food from Ryan Wrenn's plate at the Daily Bread in Pulaski.

PULASKI -- Daily Bread Director Debbie Harrell was planning an Asian-style meal last Friday for dozens of hungry people she knew would be filing in to the free food program's Jefferson Street dining room.

But after taking stock of her fresh vegetable supply, she knew plans for a stir-fry were out. Instead, the program's volunteer "heroes," as Harrell calls them, had opened enough cans of beans for a casserole. It still "needs salt and pepper," Harrell decided by 11 a.m., but with a line outside, the volunteers knew it was crunch time.

Lines of hungry town residents have become the norm at Daily Bread, which served an additional 70 meals in May over the month before, Harrell said. There's no doubt that food and gas prices have spiked demand for the free weekday lunches, but the amount of food that these charities are receiving from sources such as local grocery stores has remained the same.

"The food industry is just like any other industry. There's fuel costs, availability -- food is feeling the pinch," said Pamela Irvine, the executive director of the Salem-based Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank, which serves programs in 26 counties across Southwest Virginia. Overall, demand for charitable food donations is up 9 percent over last year, Irvine said, mostly because of families scrambling to stretch their fixed incomes further as other prices rise.

"We have to find that additional food to cover the increase in need," Irvine said. It's not that grocery stores have decreased their donations -- it's just that items nearing their expiration dates that used to come in from donors such as Food Lion are being spread more thinly across programs that need them.

For Harrell's program, that means relying more on canned food drives and more trips to the grocery store, which has cut into Daily Bread's budget by about $3,000 more than last year.

"Some days I've been known to run out twice," Harrell said, adding that she's had to put off fixing a malfunctioning oven because of financial concerns.

Kimberly Blackburn, a Food Lion spokeswoman, agreed that the grocery store chain's donations haven't gone down, but she said Kyna Foster, Food Lion's director of community efforts and customer relations, has found increasing demand from charities difficult to meet.

The high visibility of food price increases has actually translated to positive gains for some food programs. Philip Pappas, the president of the Montgomery County Emergency Assistance Program, said well-heeled shoppers watching prices climb from behind the cart seem more likely to pitch in assistance when they can see the problem firsthand.

"I think they see themselves they're paying extra for food and they can surmise that those who need it are really in poor shape," Pappas said.

The annual canned food drive facilitated by the United States Postal Service, for instance, actually collected more this year, he said.

"That surprised the postal people and maybe it surprised everybody who thought the donations would be down this year," he said.

Still, Pappas said his agency is seeing new faces that haven't needed help in the past.

"We get [requests for] financial assistance, too, but that has also increased, particularly on electric" bills, he said. "I think what's happening is that people are buying food and not paying for other things."

At Daily Bread, it's not just the weekday lunches that are helping people get by. Many residents placed their plates of bean casserole next to cartons of eggs that were available from the day's daily fresh food haul.

Miguel Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Virginia for seven years, said he stops in at Daily Bread when he can because it means more food at home for his wife and two children to eat.

He feels fortunate to get full-time work at a nearby school, but that doesn't mean the manufacturing job losses Pulaski has been hit with over the past two years haven't affected his own wallet.

"Before Pulaski Furniture closed, I had a snow shack business," Hernandez said. "I closed my business because people didn't have money to buy snow cones. ... Two years ago, I sold good. This year, no more."

Gary Walker, who used to do construction but said he now depends on a disability check, said he's been visiting Daily Bread "about 80 percent more" than he used to since food prices started rising.

"Even the off-brands, they're going up. Milk goes up just about every time you go back," Walker said. "In a town like this with no business it affects everybody."

At the next table over, Marlena Poole said she's managed to save a little money by cutting down on milk purchases, but "eggs and everything went up," she said.

"Eggs are $2.19. I used to get them 99 cents," Poole said. "It's crazy out here."

Harrell said she tries to stay optimistic about what the program does get. And her steady stream of volunteers and familiar faces have helped her stay buoyant despite having to depend more heavily on the pantry rather than the refrigerator.

"You can't blame the grocery stores for [high prices]," Harrell said.

"We're thankful for what they do give us. This program cannot survive without what they give us."

Still, she admits she's a bit worried about supplies for the summer. Lunch programs that students depend on during the school year aren't available anymore, which means more children will be coming in for a Daily Bread meal.

"Sometimes we think we're not going to have enough food fixed and the next day you might have 200 people," Harrell said.

"We make what I think will be enough and we have on occasion looked at the pot and thought we didn't have enough and then we looked in and it was like it multiplied. I think it's our heavenly father feeding his sheep, making sure we have enough."