Nonprofit looks to continue serving up nutritious meals.
Nonprofit kitchen has been serving nutritious meals to those in need for 40 years
SAN JOSE » It is minutes before 4:30 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at the Eastside Neighborhood Center in San Jose. Shepherd’s pie is warming in the oven. Fresh-cut vegetables are being added to an enormous salad.
Soon, the food will fill the bellies of dozens of people waiting for what may be their first — and possibly last — meal of the day.
This scene plays out five days a week at the center on Alum Rock Avenue, as well as two other sites operated by Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen, a nonprofit organization founded 40 years ago with the goal of providing nutritious meals to anyone in need of one.
Demand for the service has increased in recent years and shows no signs of slowing.
“It’s just normal people coming here by the tons,” one client, Hogan, said about his fellow diners. The 61-year-old declined to give his last name but described himself as an out-of-work engineer on the cusp of retirement. “There’s something to be said about that. The gaps are getting bigger and people are falling through.”
Loaves & Fishes is scrambling to
fill those gaps. Since 2014, the organization has increased the annual number of meals it provides from 100,000 to 1 millionplus, said Chief Executive Gisela Bushey.
In addition to serving meals at three sites, the organization delivers food to clients at 79 locations in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
“We unfortunately live in a place where a tremendous amount of abundance is butted right up against hunger, struggle and poverty,” Bushey said in an interview at Loaves & Fishes’ headquarters on Berger Drive in San Jose. “There truly isn’t any reason for it.”
To illustrate her point, Bushey pointed to one client who is paying $400 a month to sleep on the floor of a kitchen, which she only has access to from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
“These are not just the chronically homeless,” Bushey said. “It could be your neighbors who are struggling to make ends meet.”
Loaves & Fishes has expanded its reach thanks to a partnership with Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
In April, the organization took over Joint Venture’s A La Carte program, which repackages food from Stanford University and Facebook that has been prepared but not served.
The food, which would otherwise go to waste, is then delivered to designated sites via temperature-controlled trucks.
Bushey said the program is not only helping to feed people, it’s giving institutions and corporations a jump on pending legislation aimed at redirecting the flow of food into landfills.
“In all of our conversations with all of our partners, first and foremost for them, it’s been about feeding people who need it,” Bushey said.
“That’s what heartens us,” she continued, “because there’s recognition that we’ve got a growing problem here that is not getting better, that has actually gotten far worse than people even anticipated.”
Loaves & Fishes also relies on individual donors to help it fulfill its mission. Through Wish Book, the organization is hoping to raise $10,000, which Bushey said will fund 7,500 meals.
“For every $2 that we receive, we can provide a nutritious meal to somebody in need,” she said. “That’s how efficient we are.”
Bushey added that she expects to reduce that figure to $1.70 by the end of the fiscal year.
Back at the Eastside Neighborhood Center,
56-year-old Pete Guillen’s stomach was growling.
“I’m a little bit hungry,” he admitted.
Guillen has been on the streets for more than a decade.
He pointed to rising rents as one of the reasons.
“I come here five days a week,” Guillen said about the center. “I have to. It means a lot.”
The center also means a lot to Hyru Gau, who joined Loaves & Fishes in 2014 as its volunteer manager.
“I think doing this helps me more than it helps them,” Gau said as she provided instructions to an enthusiastic cadre of volunteers before the evening’s meal. “It’s been very fulfilling.”
Like Guillen, Hogan also is a regular. Loaves &
Fishes, he said, provides nourishment not only for the body but for the soul.
“It’s nice to see other people,” he said. “It’s a godsend, honestly.”