Community kitchen closes, but free meals continue

After the Beacon Community Kitchen closed last month, volunteers launched two free meal programs to feed residents who might go without.

A week ago, on Jan. 31, more than 100 people were fed at the inaugural weekly dinner at the First Presbyterian Church provided by volunteers from Fareground, an anti-hunger nonprofit founded in 2012. Two weeks ago, a newly created nonprofit, Beacon's Backyard, began serving breakfasts on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at The Yard.

Both projects were in the early planning stages before the closing of the Beacon Community Kitchen, which had been serving weekday lunches at Tabernacle of Christ Church since 2015 under the direction of Candi Rivera and other volunteers.

About the same time Beacon Community Kitchen closed, a meal program at First Presbyterian Church also stopped. In both cases, longtime coordinators retired or relocated.

"This wasn't the original plan," said Justice McCray, a former Beacon City Council member who helped organize Beacon's Backyard in December with plans for spring programming. "We pivoted."

Jamie Levato, the executive director at Fareground, said the sudden change feels like "a generational shift."

Fareground's Welcome Table and Beacon's Backyard Kitchen are carrying on a local tradition of feeding the hungry at a moment's notice. It took Beacon Community Kitchen less than a week to go from conception to opening in 2015 when the Salvation Army's kitchen closed unexpectedly. In March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, Beacon Mutual Aid was operating within 24 hours. Volunteers were never in short supply.

"We have a lot of people who are ready and willing to step up," said McCray. "They're just waiting for the Bat-Signal."

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The Fareground dinner began after a volunteer who also helped at First Presbyterian noted the church has a commercial kitchen. "It was perfect timing because that's what we needed to make it happen," said Levato. (Fareground moved into a space just outside Beacon last year that has a commercial kitchen, but it needs major upgrades.)

The First Presbyterian kitchen needed a few minor fixes to pass inspection by the county health department, so Meyer's Olde Dutch Beacon donated pasta, meatballs, salad and bread for the Jan. 31 meal. Diners lingered and caught up with friends while music played and children colored.

The welcoming atmosphere is as integral to the program as the food, Levato said. "We want people to have access to fresh, healthy food because food is a human right," she said. "We also want people to engage with each other. There's a lot of issues that arise from people feeling lonely and a lack of connection.

"If you see somebody once a week, you can notice that something might be wrong. Maybe they need a ride to the doctor, or maybe they have some amazing news that they want to share with someone. If you can have those connections, you can build a network of support and community care."

"It's mutual aid," said Jason Hughes, a volunteer with Beacon's Backyard Kitchen, on Tuesday (Feb. 4) before breakfast was served at The Yard. "We're not feeding them - we're feeding us."

Altrude Lewis Thorpe

Beatrice Clay

Brian Arnoff

Chef Zeke

Jeff Silverstein

Rhys Bethke

The Yard has a commercial kitchen inside a trailer. Professional chefs and enthusiastic amateurs spent the early morning preparing shakshuka, potato hash, bacon, toast and fruit salad, while volunteers laid out muffins and cereal. As the dining room filled, the kitchen staff made and packaged a dozen sandwiches to hand out for lunch.

McCray said Beacon's Backyard Kitchen decided to serve breakfast because many working people couldn't attend the Beacon Community Kitchen lunches. "With a dine-in and takeout option, people don't have to go to work hungry," McCray said. "We know there's been a lot of success with the Beacon schools' ...