Leftover Support Poor Diners Get Rich Meals Through Restaurant Donations

Low-income residents in Hillyard are dining on quiche from The Onion restaurant courtesy of the Spokane Food Bank.

“They love it,” said David Tucker, director of The Meeting Place, which serves two free dinners a week for North Side families. “They come back for seconds, thirds, fourths.”

The Spokane Food Share program, which has been in the pilot stages for two months, encourages restaurants to donate their leftovers to charity.

Now Food Bank officials are ready to expand, if they can find more restaurants to participate.

The Onion, The Mustard Seed and several Wendy’s restaurants are donating leftovers that had never been out of the kitchen.

The food is frozen at the restaurant. American Linen drivers pick up the frozen leftovers on their regular rounds and place them in industrial coolers.

The drivers deliver the food to the food bank, which keeps it frozen and sends it to charities providing free meals for the poor.

The cooks - at both the restaurant and the charity - make a point to carefully follow all public health regulations when handling the food, said Al Brislain, director of the Spokane Food Bank.

On top of tasting great, the food is usually nutritious and full of protein, something lacking in the diet of many poor people, Brislain said.

“Eggs and meat are like gold,” he said. “They are really hard to come by.”

Tucker said the food is a treat for the people who come to The Meeting Place for dinner. Restaurants have experienced chefs and more ingredients to choose from than non-profit charities, he said.

Sandra Willis, the cook at the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant in the West Central neighborhood, said she can turn a side dish of rice into a soup or a casserole and make a whole meal out of it by adding a fruit and a vegetable.

So far, the Women’s and Children’s Restaurant and The Meeting Place are the only steady recipients of the new program.

There are at least 25 other programs in Spokane that could benefit from restaurant leftovers.

But the Food Bank is running into skepticism from many restaurant owners and managers, Brislain said. Many restaurateurs worry the program will be too much of a burden on their employees.

“The way it’s set up, they’ve made it completely no problem for us,” said Leslie McHenry of The Onion. “I totally encourage other restaurants to participate.”

The Food Bank also encourages restaurants to participate in the Meal-A-Month club. Chefs prepare one dish, to serve 25, once a month.

“If they are serving thousands of people every week, what’s one dish for 25?” Brislain asked.

The Food Bank, through its distributors, feeds more than 30,000 people every month. Brislain said he is hoping to feed about 3,000 people per month through the new restaurant program.

, DataTimes