Jeanette Collier had to shut down her food pantry this week. The cupboards were bare.

“Currently it is empty,” she said Wednesday. “Except for a few cans of beans. We have to close out of fairness to the individuals who come here who are seeking food because we really have nothing to offer them.”

Collier has been coordinator of Douglas County ECKAN, 101 Riverfront Plaza, since July 2003. And she has had to close the pantry almost monthly, usually for two or three days.

But the situation is particularly dire in the summer.

“It’s an ongoing struggle during the summer months in order to keep it open. On average we serve 100 to 150 different and new families each month,” Collier said.

These are often working-class families struggling to make ends meet, their incomes not enough to cover rent, utilities and food. Food, Collier said, usually is the first to go.

“Food is one of the items that they don’t purchase because going without utilities is a major challenge for families, too,” she said.

Among those who rely on the pantry are people with fixed incomes averaging about $550 a month, Collier said.

When the larders are better-stocked at ECKAN, she is able to give each family enough food for three or four meals a week. But even then the meals don’t include much protein. Apart from occasional donations of canned tuna or salmon, the pantry only has meat when there is enough money to go to Harvesters in Topeka.

At Harvesters, a wholesale warehouse for the region’s various charities, Collier can buy meat, hygiene products or household items for 15 cents a pound. But when funds are low, many ECKAN families rely on canned beans as their main source of protein.

Christine Cress, receptionist, volunteer coordinator and food pantry director, finishes putting away donated food items in the Salvation Army food pantry. Cress was stocking the pantry Wednesday with donations from a delivery by SuperTarget employees. Food pantries across Lawrence are reporting slim pickings on their shelves as the summer continues.

Recently, Collier said, she has seen entire families of homeless people at ECKAN. Some drift from motels to cars to shelters each week as they struggle to find places to stay.

Since closing the pantry, Collier refers such families to other food pantries or shelters that serve meals. But there aren’t many good options when almost every other agency in town also is hurting for food to share.

At the Salvation Army, 946 N.H., the pantry is used both to provide food bags for families and for preparing meals to feed the poor onsite. Most of what they have now is canned corn, green beans and ramen noodles.

That makes cooking difficult for Patti Gallup, or Feliza, as her clients call her, an approximation of the Spanish word for happy.

The Salvation Army is open for lunch Monday, Wednesday and Friday and dinner every night for those staying at the shelter.

On Monday, Gallup ran out of chili at lunch and had to serve the vegetable soup she was saving for dinner.

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“Right now most food banks in Lawrence are completely out of food,” Gallup said. “We’re running out of food. It’s becoming harder and harder, especially at the end of the month.”

With no local food drives from May through September, pantries depend on word of mouth and individual donations to get by.

Wednesday, volunteers from SuperTarget came to the Salvation Army to help make food bags but left early because there wasn’t enough food to put together.

Collier said the Lawrence community was very generous but might be unaware that families still are going hungry during the summer.

“This weekend being the holiday weekend, children who would typically be in school and receive perhaps a breakfast and a lunch won’t have that opportunity,” Collier said. “So even being hungry for four days in my mind is not acceptable in this community.”