A line of cars started forming early at Tecumseh High School in New Carlisle on Wednesday, with families pulling in for weekly food boxes packed for kids.

Madison Moore drove through the school parking lot to pick up boxes for her children and said the variety keeps them coming back.

“I love the variety that’s in there,” she said. “They like the apple crisps a lot. We don’t usually get those. We love the fresh fruit, and I love that we’re able to come here every week.”

The New Carlisle stop is one of four weekly mobile summer routes run by Children’s Hunger Alliance in Ohio. The program distributes ready-to-eat meals for families to take home to their children. Each child can get a box.

The shelf-stable boxes include five days worth of breakfasts, dinners, milk and snacks. The mobile routes also offer fruit bags with apples and oranges this summer.

“It is helpful because the girls like to snack a lot, and it is snacky food, but it’s also filling, and it’s healthy stuff for them, and they enjoy picking out what their meals are each day,” Moore said.

The New Carlisle route runs from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Wednesdays. About a dozen cars were lined up by 10 a.m. to receive boxes. About 150 food boxes were distributed on Wednesday.

Another 176 boxes were given out the week before, and 226 were passed out on June 17, said Diane Miller Ryan, Children’s Hunger Alliance director of community outreach.

The group’s other mobile routes are in Coshocton on Tuesdays, Sabina on Wednesdays and Troy on Thursdays. Ryan said the Troy site distributes at least 178 boxes a week, the Sabina site averages 75 boxes, and the Coshocton site gives out more than 100 boxes a week.

“During the summer, unless the kids are going to a summer camp or something like that, that actually serves the food, they don’t have any access to it, so this gives them access that they can get food and just help them, because everybody knows the price of food is outrageous now,” Ryan said.

More than 505,000 Ohio children, or 1 in 5, struggle with hunger, and summer is typically the hungriest time of year for students who receive free or reduced school meals. Nearly 29 percent of Ohio students participated in the school breakfast program and 57.3 percent participated in the school lunch program during the 2024-25 school year, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

“During the school year, more than 900,000 children across Ohio count on the stability of a healthy meal at school each day, but when summer arrives, that dependable source of nutrition disappears,” Children’s Hunger Alliance president and CEO Michelle M. Brown said in a statement. “For many families, that means stretching tight budgets even further, while often scrambling for affordable childcare or summer camps.”

Romy Wilson said she picks up food boxes at the New Carlisle site every week this summer.

“It’s a big help,” she said.

Beth Thomas picked up three boxes on Wednesday.

“The kids really enjoy them,” she said.

Samantha Kennedy said her children, 11 and 8, like the snacks and the milk.

“I love that it gives my kids the ability to grab lunch on their own,” she said. “It’s wonderful that I don’t have to answer the question, ‘what’s for lunch?’ It also gives them some self-confidence to be able to get their own food.”

Shawna Vanmeter said her children like seeing what they get every week.

“Their favorite thing is probably the beef sticks and the juices,” she said.

One woman said her children told her the boxes are like Christmas.

The New Carlisle boxes include Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, waffles, chocolate milk, a turkey stick, fruit juice, Cheerios, a beef teriyaki stick, a pepperoni stick and pepperoni pizza crackers.

“It looks like a lot of snacky things, but it’s whole grain crackers, or meat sticks,” Ryan said. “It’s stuff that kids will eat. The big thing is you have to get kids to eat things, so we try to make it as healthy as possible.”

Children’s Hunger Alliance has about 145 summer meal sites statewide that provide food for children through the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program.

Read more from GoodGoodGood.