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Meet our Staff. Take a moment to meet the dedicated staff who run the Wayside Soup Kitchen. How We Started. Wayside is a non-profit effort with ecumenical roots. As Maine’s largest soup kitchen, Wayside has been providing nutritious meals to the homeless and poor of Greater Portland for over 20 years. In 1986, a group of area churches gathered to provide an evening meal 3 days a week at the Immanuel Baptist Church. More churches joined to add meal service on two more nights each week. These meals were served at the Williston West Church. In 1994, Wayside expanded dinner service to 7 nights a week, enrolling more churches, synagogues and other groups, and moved to what was then called the Community Resource Center when it opened in 1994. At the CRC, Wayside collaborated with Preble Street, St. Luke’s Soup Kitchen, and other social service agencies providing services to the homeless and hungry in one central location.
Wayside added weekday lunch service in 2003. Lunch preparation, service and cleanup were supervised by Wayside staff. As with the evening meal, volunteers from the Greater Portland community provided the ‘people power’. Wherever possible, all meals were prepared from donated food. Over time, Wayside staff and volunteers made connections with many generous food donors. Enough food was available – and might have gone to waste -- that Wayside inaugurated its Food Rescue Program in 1999. Here Wayside collects food from grocers, processors, restaurants, wholesalers and distributes it to food pantries, soup kitchens and group homes. Initially food was collected and dropped off at agencies from the back of a truck. Today Wayside has warehouse space in Portland, Maine and distributes food, free of charge, to agencies throughout Cumberland County. Qualifying agencies also receive TEFAP commodities through Wayside Food Rescue. The United Way of Greater Portland, Cumberland County, F.E.M.A., U.S.D.A., and the City of Portland provide funds for Wayside. Churches, businesses, private foundations and hundreds of individuals contribute to Wayside each year. Beginning in March of 2010, Wayside moved away from the central soup kitchen at the CRC and into a neighborhood-based model of feeding the community. Wayside Soup Kitchen |
