What Else Is a Food Bank Called? Pantry, Depository, Food Shelf, and More

Short answer

In standard American usage, a food bank is the warehouse tier: it collects, stores, and sorts donated food and moves it out to smaller frontline sites. Those frontline sites are the ones with all the alternate names — food pantry, food shelf, food cupboard, food closet, community fridge — and some warehouse-tier organizations call themselves a food depository or food distribution center instead. The term is written as two words in U.S. usage, matching how the national network's own materials write it (Feeding America).

If you want the functional distinction rather than the vocabulary, start with food bank vs. food pantry.

Why there are so many names

Most of these organizations are independent nonprofits, congregations, or municipal programs that named themselves. Nobody assigns names centrally, so the label reflects local history and branding more than structure. Federal programs sidestep the problem by using generic category words: USDA describes a chain in which state agencies pass USDA foods to local organizations — frequently food banks — which in turn supply the pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters that hand food to households (USDA Food and Nutrition Service, TEFAP). The federal paperwork terms you will run into are distributing agency, eligible recipient agency, and emergency feeding organization.

Names for the warehouse tier

These organizations usually serve partner agencies rather than individuals, operate dock doors and cold storage, and have a service territory covering multiple counties:

Food bank — the common American term.
Food depository or food distribution center — same function, different chosen name.
Regional food distribution organization or network member — language used when describing a food bank's role inside a larger national network.

Names for the tier that hands food to households

Food pantry — the most widespread term.
Food shelf, food cupboard, food closet — all describe a site where a household receives groceries to take home.
Mobile pantry or mobile market — a pantry that distributes from a truck on a route.
Community fridge — an unstaffed, publicly accessible refrigerator, usually volunteer-run and not part of the TEFAP chain.
Soup kitchen, community kitchen, meal site — these serve prepared meals on site rather than groceries; see soup kitchen vs. food pantry.

Names for the groups that move surplus the same day

The organizations that pick up surplus from kitchens and retailers and deliver it before it spoils are a separate category again, and they go by:

Food rescue and food recovery — used interchangeably for the pickup-and-delivery function. Feeding America's own framing treats rescuing surplus food as a distinct workstream from warehousing donated shelf-stable goods (Feeding America).
Gleaning group — volunteers who harvest crops left in fields or orchards.
Prepared-food recovery — specifically moving cooked or assembled food from kitchens.
Campus chapter — student-run recovery groups on college campuses often organize as chapters of a national student network (Food Recovery Network).

For how that pickup-to-pantry chain actually runs, see how food rescue works.

Is "foodbank" one word?

American editorial usage is two words: food bank. You will sometimes see the closed form foodbank, but it usually appears inside an organization's own chosen name, which is a branding decision rather than a signal that the operation differs. Write it as two words in ordinary prose, and reproduce the closed form only when quoting a name that uses it.

Check the function, not the label

The name on the sign won't tell you what you need to know. Before you donate to or seek food from an organization, confirm three things: whether it serves individuals or only partner agencies, whether it accepts refrigerated and prepared food or only shelf-stable goods, and what hours it can actually receive a delivery. Those answers determine whether a donation fits — the vocabulary doesn't.