Soup kitchen serving meals around town

A Delray Beach soup kitchen is on the rebound, serving meals seven days a week at congregations across the city after closing its dining room in October.

For 20 years, the Caring Kitchen served hot meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner at 196 NW Eighth Ave. But the city decided the kitchen needed to stop feeding people there after neighbors complained of public defecation, fights and people sleeping in yards near the city-owned building.

Now, each day of the week, a different church opens its doors to help the Caring Kitchen serve those in need, but overall the kitchen is serving fewer people than it did a month ago.

“Our goal is to serve at least one meal every day of the week,” said Gibbie Nauman, a spokeswoman for CROS Ministries, the nonprofit that runs the Caring Kitchen.

The kitchen, which used to serve 150 to 200 meals during lunch every week in its old dining room, is down to serving 75 to 100 on average, Nauman said.

But the numbers are growing, and CROS ministries is confident the numbers will continue to trend upward as more people learn of the new locations. “It’s only been a month,” Nauman said. “I think people are still trying to figure out where we are serving.”

The Caring Kitchen largely relies on donations for its meals and volunteers “get very creative” with preparing them: There’s meat, a starch, a dessert and sometimes a salad, she said.

Volunteers still prepare the food in the city-owned building on Eighth Avenue, though they can no longer serve it there. The city is allowing CROS Ministries to continue using the location until the end of July.

“It allows us to step back a little and figure out how we can make it better, how we can serve more people and reevaluate the program as a whole,” Nauman said.

The Caring Kitchen meal schedule is as follows:

noon to 1 p.m., Resurrection Life Fellowship 209 SW Fifth Ave., Delray Beach.

noon to 1 p.m.,

Monday: Tuesday:

Cason UMC, 342 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach; Enter on the south side.

noon to 1 p.m., St. Matthew’s Episcopal, 404 SW Third St., Delray Beach; Parish Hall across the street from the sanctuary.

Wednesday:

noon to 1 p.m., Cason UMC noon to 1 p.m., St. Matthew’s Episcopal 9 to 9:30 a.m., Bag Lunches at Cason UMC

Thursday: Friday: Saturday:

5 to 5:30 p.m., Delray Beach Haitian United Church of the Nazarene, 338 NW Sixth Ave.

Sunday: