Kitchen goes curbside: Volunteers keep meals moving, despite pandemic

GALESBURG, Ill. — The volunteers at the Knox Prairie Community Kitchen are making sure that hunger has no place to hide in Galesburg and the Knox County area.

“Food insecurity hides itself well in Knox County,” said Brett Wright.

Wright has been a board member of the all-volunteer Knox Prairie Community Kitchen since 2018 and took over as board president in January.

The kitchen itself was started in 2011 as an offshoot of another program that provided sack lunches during holiday, winter and summer breaks from school to children and families. The kitchen is a non-profit, 501(c)3 program that operates out of the First Baptist Church in Galesburg.

The mission of the kitchen is to do what kitchens do — feed people. In fulfilling that mission, the kitchen also fulfills another mission of any typical kitchen in bringing people together around the table.

Even when the table has temporarily been put away, the volunteers at the kitchen continue their mission.

“A large part of our mission is just bringing folks together from all walks of life in the Knox County and Galesburg community. I don’t care if you are elderly or a shut-in, if you are struggling with food insecurity, maybe somebody who is displaced at this time, or if you have a family who enjoys coming out and meeting other people and sharing fellowship with them,” Wright said.

The traditional setup for the kitchen and its volunteers has been to serve bi-monthly suppers in the dining room at the church. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the kitchen’s board was faced with challenges on all sides.

“For safety concerns, we just couldn’t have folks together at that time. On a normal night, we were serving 150 to 250 guests in a pretty confined area in the dining room. Because a lot of our guests are elderly, we felt it necessary to take the action not to expose them and thus be unsafe in terms of managing COVID-19. We halted our meals from March and started back up in June with curbside service,” Wright said.

Switching to serving meals curbside meant some big changes for the program and volunteers. Typically, suppers are served in the dining room at the church, using a setup where people go through a serving line or are served at a serving counter on real plates and with real silverware.

“We don’t serve food on paper plates or cups. As part of our mission, we wanted to serve food on china and real silverware, so there’s more formality to it than simply grabbing something at a fast food place with disposable packaging,” Wright said.

Board members and volunteers figured out a way to reconfigure kitchen practices, incorporating masks and social distancing, to be able to continue the meals.

“We still saw the need and wanted to be able to provide food to members of our community. We had our board meeting in April or May and decided we were going to do curbside. What that involved was coordinating how the process would work,” Wright said.

Among the details that had to be figured out were things like the flow of traffic — and how those without transportation would be served.

“We had some issues when we first started with traffic backups. We had enough folks interested in partaking of the meal that they were blocking some of the intersections. The Galesburg Police Department gave some direction there, and we ended up partnering with a local church to route cars through the parking lot before they actually get on the street in front of the church where the distribution happens,” Wright said.

Another detail that had to be worked out was how to accommodate those who didn’t have transportation and walked to the suppers.

“We organized the event so they can line up on the sidewalk. You don’t have to be in a car to get the food,” Wright said.

The curbside meals require fewer volunteers, about 12 to 20 per meal versus 20 to 30 at the indoor meals, and take less time to serve since there is no need for bussing and cleaning tables for multiple seatings.

Volunteers hail from all parts of the local area, including churches, school and civic groups. Students from Knox College, Carl Sandburg College and Galesburg High School are among the ranks of those who regularly volunteer.

“Curbside happens a lot quicker. Normally we would start serving at 5 p.m. and continue through to around 7 p.m. With curbside, we find out for the most part that within an hour, all of our guests are served,” Wright said.

Board member and kitchen manager Odette Jackson works with other board members to decide how much food will be needed for each meal. They plan for 150 to 200 guests per meal.

Holiday meals, served in November and December, typically have larger attendance. At its recent Thanksgiving dinner, volunteers served 281 guests with a curbside dinner of turkey and all the fixings, including pumpkin pie.

The kitchen is supported financially in multiple ways. The Galesburg Community Foundation has been a steady supporter via grant programs.

“We have consistent donations coming from supporters. We’ve been blessed in that respect. Even for our largest meals, the November and December meals, we’ve had anonymous donors for several years running, provide the funds for those meals,” Wright said.

The cost of providing a typical meal service is around $750, with the holiday events around $900, due to increased numbers of guests.

Wright said that while the initial return to serving dinners drew a small response — just over 40 people received meals from the first curbside service in June — the numbers have grown from there.

“Like a lot of communities in Illinois, a lot of folks are struggling with employment, with being furloughed or being laid off. We’ve seen the demand for our meals steadily grow,” he said.

At the same time, while donors continue to be generous, the kitchen has seen a slight drop in donations.

“As with everything during a time like this, our donations appear to be down a bit. That’s no different than a lot of businesses are seeing in retail sales or a lot of other nonprofits are seeing in donations, but it will be a challenge going forward. But we are ready to deal with it. We’ve got a very flexible and active board who are really dedicated to our mission,” Wright said.

Wright said in spite of all the challenges, the kitchen volunteers and board members remain focused on feeding their neighbors.

“It’s sad to think that there are folks in the United States who go without food. We are just happy to be able to bring a program together, organize it and manage it to reach those folks,” he said.

Donations to the Knox Prairie Community Kitchen can be made online at www.knoxprairiekitchen.org or by mail: Knox Prairie Community Kitchen, P.O. Box 1784, Galesburg, IL 61402.