Canberra's largest emergency food charity has almost completely run out of food, and a jump in demand has left its storerooms bare amid dwindling donations.

Sue Jordan has been involved with the St John's Care free food pantry at Reid for 16 years, and said she was "frightened" by the sight of her bare storerooms.

Baked beans, chicken noodles and tea are the only back-up supplies.

"To me as the programs manager it really is frightening," she said.

"I haven't seen it as empty as this and it scares me, really scares me.

"I have only got a few days supply.

"What happens then, do I put the closed sign up?"

St John's Care is Canberra's largest non-government emergency food relief charity, but cash donations have dropped 15 per cent over the past two years, along with a drop in regular food items.

Ms Jordan said the number of Canberrans visiting the charities pantry had jumped from 12 a day a few years ago to 25 this autumn.

"Each day I am giving out 25 cans of soup," she said.

Ms Jordan says more people are slipping into poverty in Canberra. ( ABC News: Mark Moore )

"We are just not keeping up at the moment."

Ms Jordan said she normally had three months of back-up supply, but she is down to less than one month's worth.

She cites a combination of driving factors including widening poverty, high living expenses, difficulty sourcing low-cost rentals or public housing and restrictive unemployment benefits including Newstart and Youth Allowance.

"What can you do on $40 a day?" she asked.

"There is a big need out there and there are more people slipping into poverty all the time."

Ms Jordan said there were two Canberra's, with one of them largely hidden from public view.

"When people think of Canberra they think of a rich city … I see a different city," she said.

"I see a poor city, I see people that are homeless, refugees and migrants that have got virtually nothing."

But Ms Jordan said there had been some very welcome and unexpected donations recently.

"I had someone that just did a supermarket online shop and it was delivered to us … it was wonderful!

"So if people can't get to us, then that is one way of helping."

Demand growing for food

The nation's largest hunger relief organisation, Foodbank, said it expected to distribute record amounts of fresh food across the ACT over the coming months.

Each year Foodbank distributes more than 400 tonnes of food to 30 registered charities in Canberra and Queanbeyan.

Canberra City Care operations manager Danielle Bate says the charity is dependent on Foodbank. ( ABC News: Mark Moore )

CEO Gerry Andersen said some of the produce was rescued by farmers and packing sheds in the New South Wales Riverina and the members of the Australian Food and Grocery Council.

"In the ACT over the last two years demand has grown 6 per cent," Mr Andersen said.

"We are doing every single thing we can to increase the amount of food we supply because our charter is to fight hunger in Australia."

But Mr Andersen said supply was struggling to keep up with demand, as the number of charities seeking Foodbank's supply continued to grow.

"In the year we are in we have gone from a bit of 500 to over 600 charities and that's 30 per cent growth in volume across NSW and the ACT as a whole," he said.

He said Federal Government funding of $1 million per year was only one tenth of what his organisation needed.

'Drop off what you don't need'

Charnwood's Canberra City Care is one of the registered charities that relies on regular deliveries of Foodbank's bulk rescued food.

Operations manager Danielle Bate said the charity's significantly discounted pantry fed around 300 households each week, totalling more than 1,200 registered households annually.

The majority of shoppers come from the West Belconnen region, but others travel from Tuggeranong and even nearby NSW towns including Gundaroo and Sutton.

"We did see an increase in the last year or two," Ms Bate said.

"We can go through the crates of fresh fruit and vegetables that we get within an hour or two."

Canberra City Care began 10 years ago and Ms Bates said the service was constantly working to diversify the sourcing of supplies, including swapping food with nearby residents and also growing fresh produce in a new harvest garden.

She said the pantry items were sold to anyone experiencing financial hardship, no questions asked, for between one third, or even one quarter, of the market rate.

"We wouldn't operate without Foodbank," she said.

"Those four to six pallets that we get are all our shelf staples.

"If you have a garden and you have excess, if you have a fruit tree that you don't use yourself but you have fruit on it, come to someone like us.

"Drop off what you don't need because we can certainly make use of it."