A Raleigh rideshare driver has spent more than a year ferrying hungry families to food pantries for free, often paying her own gas money and now nearly $500 a week in rental fees just to keep the wheels turning. Paige Tate, 34, founded Pantry to Go in August 2025, and she still runs the operation largely on her own.
Tate says the idea came from a single ride. As reported by ABC11, she picked up a young, pregnant woman as a Lyft passenger who needed help finding food, and that encounter became the seed for Pantry to Go. Tate has said transportation, not the lack of nearby pantries, is often the biggest barrier keeping families from the food that is actually available to them.
Today Tate averages three to four clients a day, and up to six when enough volunteers are available, according to the same ABC11 report. She works with four or five volunteers who help with pickups and deliveries, taking clients from their homes to food pantries and, when someone has gone without food for a while, arranging emergency deliveries instead.
More Than Just a Ride
Tate does not simply drop clients off. She helps them navigate the pantry process and goes inside with them, saying she accompanies people so they are not alone and may feel less nervous walking in. At Centro para Familias in Raleigh, she says the pantry offers far more than groceries — clothes, children's books, diapers, free tax help and items to make meals, including frozen meat, per the ABC11 account. Centro Para Familias Hispanas, part of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Raleigh, provides family support and case management services aimed at easing poverty among Wake County's Hispanic community.
Pantry to Go's own website lists its current service area as Raleigh, Durham, Garner and Knightdale, describing itself with the pitch: need a ride to the food pantry, need groceries delivered, we've got you — always free, according to pantrytogo.org. ABC11's report frames the program more broadly as serving families across the Triangle, including Garner, Durham, Cary and Zebulon. Tate also built a resource page on the site listing other assistance available across the region.
Funding a Nonprofit Out of Pocket
There is no outside funding keeping Pantry to Go on the road. Tate's own rideshare income covers the website, the scheduling system, gas and vehicle maintenance, the station's report notes. That arrangement turned precarious when her car's catalytic converter failed; the repair estimate came in around $2,400, and she paused the program for about a month and a half while she recovered financially.
She now drives a rental through Lyft's rental program, which costs almost $500 a week, per the same account. Tate has said donations would let her leave the rental program and offer rides on more days — she has time to help people, she says, but cannot personally donate money. Those wanting rides or hoping to volunteer can reach Pantry to Go through Instagram messages or its website.
A Backdrop of Rising Need
Tate's one-woman operation is filling a gap amid worsening regional numbers. More than 629,000 people are now food insecure across the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina's 34-county service area, nearly 180,000 more than at the peak of the pandemic, according to a report from Wake Weekly. The same report found that one in seven people across the region, including one in five children, are unsure where their next meal will come from, and that SNAP enrollment fell 12.2% between July 2025 and April 2026 even as local pantries and meal sites reported an unsustainable rise in visits across the food bank's network of more than 700 hunger-relief programs.
The strain is visible elsewhere in central North Carolina too. In Chatham County, CORA served 1,695 children through its summer food program, a 17% increase over the prior year, while the number of new families receiving food from the organization grew from 922 to 1,636 during its most recent fiscal year, Carolina Public Press reported. CORA runs choice pantries in Pittsboro and Siler City where visitors select their own groceries, and the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina distributed 96 million meals across its service area last year.
Tate experienced homelessness herself in 2023 after leaving a bad relationship, before rebuilding her credit, buying a car and getting her own place — a history she has pointed to as part of why she started driving people to get the help she once needed. She has said she believes community cooperation could help ensure no one goes without. The ABC11 Together Food Drive, now marking 40 years of helping neighbors in need, is set to begin November 18 and will benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.
