It’s called a Blessing Box. For folks hungry in Fort Mill, it’s ready to serve.

It’s a familiar concept with books. Two groups of men got together and figured, why wouldn’t it work with food?

A Blessing Box was delivered Friday afternoon to Greater Bethlehem Baptist Church in Fort Mill. It’s the same concept as the Little Free Library boxes popping up around town and elsewhere. Except instead of picking up or dropping off books for free, anyone can get a can of vegetables or fruit.

“This is the first one,” said Frank DeLuise from Carolina Orchards. “We’re going to see how this goes, and I have every indication it’ll go well, and then from there we’ll move on, yeah. I think we’ll do more.”

DeLuise said he and other “Romeos” — retired old men eating out — wanted to do more than just socialize in their new neighborhood off Springfield Parkway.

“What we decided was we’re going to be a social group, and also a group that is community-minded,” he said. “We sensed a need here.”

The idea came from seeing similar Blessing Box projects on television.

“I got a couple of our talented guys here to build one for us, and the men donated some food to get us started, and here we are,” DeLuise said.

He met with church leader Phil Williams, who got other men from the church together to install the box. It sits, like the library opposite it, on a pole beside an entrance to Steele Street Park not far from downtown. Putting it in the park makes it as accessible to the community as it can be.

“Any time there’s an opportunity to minister to the community, it’s a good thing,” Williams said.

The church will help keep the box stocked. It isn’t refrigerated, so everything donated has to be nonperishable. But it may still be seasonal, like soup in the fall and juice boxes in the summer. People won’t get their weekly groceries there, but they could get something to stretch one paycheck into another or help when tough times hit.

“When we have a food pantry, a lot of times people are very prideful about their conditions and their circumstances,” Williams said.

“I believe having this food box outside and available to everybody in the community to come and pick up without any interference with anyone else, I think it’s an opportunity not only to serve the community, but to bless the community as well.”

This story was originally published March 31, 2017 at 3:58 PM with the headline "It’s called a Blessing Box. For folks hungry in Fort Mill, it’s ready to serve.."