Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH Food Bank is Celebrating 50 Years of Service

The July-August 2026 edition of South Sound Business is focused on local legacy businesses. We’re putting a spotlight on several in the area; read about last week’s subject, The Rants Group, here.

Though she was raised in Gig Harbor, Jan Coen’s tenure as a military wife saw her travel all over the globe. However, it was during her stint in San Diego that Coen served as a deaconess for her church, where she worked with a group of 15 churches to provide food and other resources to community members in need.

When Coen’s husband relocated back to the Pacific Northwest, Coen looked around her hometown of Gig Harbor for a vehicle to continue to provide service but instead found a vacuum.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh, great, I’m going to plug in (in Washington) with a similar organization,’ but there wasn’t anything,” Coen said. “So I started talking to some the people in the community, and it just escalated. We decided we’d have a brainstorming meeting and find out what people were willing to do and what was the best method to provide service.”

The result of those meetings was the Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH Food Bank, an unaffiliated nonprofit community food bank based off the model of the biblical FISH international movement that practiced a neighbors-helping-neighbors ethos.

Launched in 1976, the organization celebrated its 50th anniversary in June. Looking back through the decades, a few notable stories stand out for Coen.

One such instance occurred when the organization had only been in operation about 10 years.

“We received a check from New Jersey and this woman said, ‘I’m sending you $750. My dad passed away in Gig Harbor, and I found out that the FISH program had put a roof on his house. I wanted to pay you back,’” Coen recalled.

All these years later, Coen said it’s still “amazing” that the service FISH provides here in Gig Harbor can “spread clear across the United States.”

Of the assistance FISH provides its namesake city, Coen is quick to address preconceived notions about the community’s wealth.

“Gig Harbor is a wealthy community,” she said. “I think they’re known for having upscale houses and people driving BMWs and high-end cars, but the majority of people here are also what we call the ALICE people — they are asset-limited, income-constrained employees. … All they need is one car breakdown and they can’t get to work, and just the whole process crumbles.”

That’s why Coen’s message is so clear and concise: FISH is there to help anyone and everyone when they have a problem, whether it’s a few canned goods, help with a utility bill, or a roof repair.

Through the decades, FISH has grown to include a cadre of close to 350 community volunteers, and the organization in 2022 opened a new 11,550-square-foot facility on Burnham Drive to strengthen its service.

“We have other food banks come and say, ‘How did you do this? How did you build this and how do you get this many volunteers?’” Coen said. “But people really buy in. They feel like they are really making a difference, and their suggestions and their ideas are really vital to how we be successful.”