06/04/2026
Hello Soup Kitchen Friends,
It's been awhile since I have posted any updates. First let me thank everyone for their faithful support during the Fall and Winter months. We continued to serve an average of 75 guests each day, and your monetary donations and donations of food and supplies went a long way in serving many individuals, and families through the season.
As you may or may not know, the bulk of our donations often come during the Fall and Winter months, while guest numbers typically fluctuate between the seasons, this year we are experiencing a rapid increase moving our daily servings into the 90's. So once again we are asking for your help to keep our shelves stocked to enable us to meet the demand and continue to serve nutritious meals to our guests. Monetary donations are always welcome, but there are also food items and supplies that we can use to stretch our dollars. Here is a list of how anyone can help.
Fresh Fruit & Vegetables; this time of year we love to fill our menus with things like grapes, bananas, melons, apples, peaches and any other fresh fruits we are able to procure. It's a little early for fresh garden vegetables, but if you have high yields in your garden this year, we are happy and grateful to accept; tomatoes, cucumbers, squash & zucchini.
Meats; probably our largest expense, popular meats used on a regular basis are, 80/20 ground beef, bone-in chicken thighs, boneless chicken breast, loose sausage and whole pork loins. We use an average of 14 # of meat for a meal, but we are grateful for any quantity, and have the freezer space to store any donations.
Snacks & Desserts; we continue to serve two meals on Saturdays, one hot meal and one bag lunch for Sunday when we are closed. We can use single serve snacks, such as chips, doritos, corn chips etc. and peanut butter crackers to put in our lunch bags, and also individually wrapped snack cakes, jello cups and pudding cups. Tastykake, Little Debbie and Hostess have a good variety of snack cakes, and many stores have a store brand of these items.
Pantry Items; one day each week we also provide a couple of pantry items to our guests that they can select from a cart. These are ALL donated items, we do not purchase food to distribute to our guests beyond the prepared meal, however through the generosity of others we are able to help sustain our guests with items collected through individual donation and perioding food drives. Some of the items frequently used and requested by are guests are;
Spam, Canned Sardines, Vienna Sausages, Single Serve Cereal, Shelf Stable Milk (pints), Chunky Soups, Chef BoyArdee, Dinty Moore Beef Stew Ramen Noodles, Peanut Butter & Jelly(small jars), Gatorade, Juice Boxes & Pouches, any other items that are easy to tote.
If you have any questions about drop off times please feel free to call the Soup Kitchen at 717-334-2773. We are happy to make arrangements for a delivery. Other food items and supplies can be found on our website, and our monthly rotation items are listed on our page on a regular basis.
Thank you in advance for your help in keeping our neighbors in need fed. We can't say enough about the kindness and generosity of our area communities.
Sandy Lutz, Director of Operations
