Meals On Main
Who We Are
Hey! We're Meals on Main, and we operate a weekly soup kitchen in Christiansburg, Virginia. Every Tuesday, we take the local YMCA's food truck (affectionately known as Becky) and give out roughly 150 meals. In the last five months (as of April 2024) we've given out over 1300 free meals, all at zero net cost to ourselves. We've gotten pretty lucky on our journey to feed people good food for free, but we'd like to share our operational methods, and hopefully help others to create sustainable soup kitchens and serve nutritious, tasty meals.
Becky the food truck, 12/12/23
Our Mission
Hunger is a silent killer. It can be hard to recognize when someone around you is food insecure, and every single one of us knows someone who is. More than one in ten people in the United States (the wealthiest nation on the planet!) are food insecure[1], but what does that really mean? The USDA defines food insecurity as "a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.[2]" On a day-to-day basis, that looks like not knowing where your next meal is coming from, or even when you'll be able to eat next. It's challenging to live that way, let alone work. To get a better idea of food insecurity rates near you (in the US only, sorry) check out this great webpage from Feeding America, an organization whose goal is collecting and compiling data on food insecurity for public use.
At Meals on Main, we believe in the power of food. It's one of a few "equalizers;" everyone needs food, regardless of their life situation, and everyone should have access to healthy, delicious food. Everyone deserves to have their basic needs met, and we do what we can to provide one of those needs, and build community in the process. We do our best to be available every single Tuesday, rain or shine, to reliably provide at least one meal per week, entirely for free, with almost no questions asked (more on that later).
Our Inspiration
We’re heavily inspired by Food Not Bombs, a group of independent collectives. Each chapter operates independently to share free food to those who need it. The food is usually vegan or vegetarian, so that it’s accessible to as many people as possible, and their core beliefs are as follows (copied from Wikipedia):
· Meals are usually vegan or vegetarian. The Gainesville, Florida, USA chapter, for example, serves meals that include animal products such as chicken, pork chops, brisket, steak and shrimp.[1][2]
· Meals are free to anyone.
· Each chapter is independent and autonomous and makes decisions via consensus.
· Dedication to nonviolence.
· Views "food as a right not a privilege."[5]
From their beliefs, their goals follow logically (copied from Wikipedia):
1. To combat poverty and homelessness[6]
2. To facilitate community gatherings of hungry people
3. To allow anyone to volunteer to help cook, and then eat.[7]
Each collective has little to no contact with other collectives and operates within their own community. It’s easier to get started than you think, and in the United States, there is always surplus food to be found, food that would otherwise go to waste. If this inspires you like it does us, then just do it! Everybody needs food, but not everyone can get the food that they need. Look around your area, and you’ll find people in need.
How We Got Started
A dishwasher and a line cook walk into a bar [kitchen]. It sounds like a joke, but it's where this all started. Seth and Connor (that's us!) met working in the kitchen of a bar/restaurant. Our friendship began with a few book recommendations (namely this one and this one). We realized that we had a lot of shared values, and began cooking up a plan to feed people in the area. Our original intention was to put up a canopy in a parking lot and give out fried rice, at cost to ourselves. We began asking around our town for a parking lot that we could use, and got INCREDIBLY lucky. The local YMCA had a lovely looking parking lot, so we emailed them about using it. Ding! Reply: they have an entire food truck lying around, almost totally unused, and they'd be willing to let us use it to serve food in one of the communities that they already have a program in. And so, Meals on Main was born.
The first meal we served was a holiday meal consisting of turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, mashed potatoes with gravy, and collard greens. Since then, we've served over a thousand more meals, all nutritionally complete and (mostly) well-received by the community. A few of the other meals include beef lasagna, chicken/seafood gumbo, beef birria tacos, and chicken fried rice.
