For 13 years, Love Serve Feed has been serving up a hot meal and a hug every Saturday
For 13 years, Love Serve Feed has been serving up a hot meal and a hug every Saturday
The members of Love Serve Feed want to provide the Austin area community with a warm meal and warm hug when they can, as they have done every Saturday since November 2011. Dedicating approximately 2288 hours per year through their volunteers, members of Love Serve Feed have been prepping food, cooking, shopping, picking up donations in addition to their weekly serving and distributing food on Sundays.
“We don’t want to be an organization who is just there to provide food,” says co-founder Laurie Winckel. “While that is important, we want to be a community.” To that end, beyond serving food Love Serve Feed provided picnic tables for people to hang out, chat, and play games while also receiving a warm meal. “We want people to feel loved, seen, and we want them to feel like there is a place they can come and belong.”
Two big events for Love Serve Feed are their annual Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Soup/Chili/Wings Lunch. For Thanksgiving, they roast over 40 turkeys to make sure they can serve those who may not have a place to celebrate the holiday, as well as providing leftovers to anyone in need who cannot make it to the event. They typically serve about 1,400 Thanksgiving Dinners through this event. Likewise at Christmas, the community gets involved prepping soups, chili, and wings to serve around 800 to 1,000 lunches.
A meal when you are hungry can make all the difference in a person’s life, as evidenced by how many people served end up serving others themselves. “We’ve had thousands of people come through our lines through the years and we love it when those who start out coming to eat, end up serving on the other side of the line because they see the difference we make in the lives of others, and they want to be part of that.”
Love Serve Feed’s weekly Saturday lunches serve around 250 to 400 people depending on the day and they are truly out there every single Saturday since 2011. They serve lunches outside of Hernandez Middle School and the lunch is open to anyone passing by no questions asked. “If you are hungry, let us serve you.”
