When Mid-Ohio Food Collective opens its Eastland Prosperity Center in the fall, it will be a fitting capstone to the career of Matt Habash, who recently announced his retirement from the food bank after 42 years.
More than four decades ago, Habash decided to forego law school to instead work at a community hub based in Columbus, Ohio. There, a patron once made an impression by relaying that he valued being able to get food at a place that was not obviously a food pantry. The notion stuck with Habash. “How do you de-stigmatize the experience?” he said.
The soon-to-be-opened Prosperity Center will be Habash’s grandest effort at taking the stigma out of hunger relief. Envisioned as a light-filled modern facility, more than half of the space will be devoted to community partners, including medical and health services. It will be the biggest and boldest of nine similar Mid-Ohio Markets already in operation, which combine free grocery shopping and wraparound services over extended hours.
“Watching that building at the end of my career get open takes me all the way back to my roots,” Habash said, adding that food banks don’t have to own all the programming related to getting people to a state of food security. “You bring other partners into the space and really build a collaborative model.”
When Habash became Executive Director of the then-called Mid-Ohio Foodbank in 1984, it was distributing three million pounds of food, a fraction of the 73 million pounds distributed in 2025 through its 600 programs and partners. In addition to innovating the Mid-Ohio Market concept to combine client-choice food and social services, Habash in 2013 established a high-tech farm program that now includes vertical growing towers, state-of-the-art greenhouses, a demonstration kitchen, and education for kids.
Habash’s legacy also includes the food bank’s production kitchen, which was established in 2015 and produced more than 400,000 meals in 2024. The kitchen is expected to get a boost when it relocates to the new Prosperity Center in September, giving it more than 12,000 square feet of space and the ability to significantly increase output.
The food bank also runs the Mid-Ohio Farmacy, in which food-insecure patients can get referrals from their doctors to pick up fresh produce from participating pantries. It is in the early stages of expanding that program statewide through partnerships with two other food banks in the state.
Reflecting on the future of Food is Medicine, Habash said that scaling such efforts will be a challenge for food banks. If the sector ever takes off, then large-scale food movers like Amazon, Kroger or Walmart are likely to get into the act, he said. Food banks, however, have a few things to offer, including the economic advantage of being able to source produce for free or at very low cost, as well as data on their customers that could help them connect food-insecure patients to healthcare and be useful in closing the referral loop. “It’s going to continue to play out,” Habash noted.
During his career, Habash oversaw development of a customer data-tracking system now widely used throughout Feeding America, as well as an effort to greatly expand the amount of produce going through the network. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Food Bank News’ CEO of the Year award in 2023 and Feeding America’s prestigious John van Hengel Fellowship Award in 2011. From 1993 to 2006, Habash was a member of Columbus City Council, serving as President for the last seven years.
It was Habash’s dream when he first started at the food bank to put it out of business. Instead, it has just gotten bigger and bigger. But so has the mandate. “Our thinking is, ‘What can we do to help you thrive and help build a community where everyone thrives?’ That’s been the transformation over the last several years.” – Chris Costanzo
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