Masbia Soup Kitchen Network announces changes to regular services. While hours of operations will remain the same, clients who will come for raw grocery food to take home, will be allowed to take up to 14 days worth of food, regularly people are allowed to take 3-7 days worth of food. The pantry giveaway allows clients to come every 7 days. Now we ask them to come every 14 days. The daily hot dinner will no longer be served as a sit-in meal, it will be packaged to go.
Early Sunday morning, a text message was sent out to all clients, "[COVID-19] Take DOUBLE the amount of raw FOOD and need to wait 14 days to come back. Hot dinner will be served in containers to go". This message was sent out via the Plentiful App. The information was also posted on a new web page: www.masbia.org/covid19
With the increased food anxiety among people, and in the spirit of social distancing, it only made sense to give people more, and ask them to show up less. Therefore we are drastically increasing the raw food allowance for clients to take home. And even the cooked daily hot dinner, we will no longer serve restaurant style. They will be packed up to go, said Alexander Rapaport, Executive director of the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network.
"We will also turn to our donors to help feed the needy at this critical time. Our labor costs are going up. With lots of volunteers cancelling, we will need to hire more temps. At this time of the year, we usually start the transition to Kosher for Passover food, but with the increase in demand now, we will need to anticipate doing a lot more on all fronts", Rapaport added.
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What: Daily hot dinner will no longer be served as a sit-in meal, it will be packaged to go. And allowing clients to take 14 days worth of raw food, that is double the normal amount.
When: Sunday, March 15, 2020 2:00PM
Where: Masbia of Queens 105-47 64th Road Forest Hills NY 11375
Contact: Alexander Rapaport [email protected] 718-9724446 x 301
Website: www.masbia.org
Twitter: @masbia
