We have long been proud of our food program and this year we are excited to announce its expansion.
PHS provides nutritious meals 365 days a year in communities with chronic food insecurity.
The PHS Food Program is truly a marvel. Every day we serve approximately 1,500 restaurant quality meals in Vancouver and 600 in Victoria. That’s every day of theweek, every week of the year.
We produce more than 14,000 meals every week, or over 760,000 meals per year.
Even more impressively, the 1,500 meals produced daily in Vancouver were mainly coming out of a central kitchen that had originally designed to produce only 200 meals per day.
The staff i
ngenuity and resilience that made this possible is a testament to skill and hard work. But the situation was never going to be sustainable.
Not only had staff had been working in outdated spaces, they had been doing so with aging equipment.
Our main kitchen at Alexander Street Community had been in daily use since 2015, and the Station Street Community auxiliary space had been in service since 2012 and were showing considerable wear and tear.
Fortunately, the Al Roadburg Foundation stepped up to the plate with funding to upgrade and re-equip our main commercial kitchen at Alexander Street Community.
At the same time, Vancouver Foundation provided funding to upgrade our previously under-utilized kitchen at Woodwards to include new temperature-monitoring storage to help process, package and store shelf-stable meals for residents, shelter guests and other community members that have been displaced by emergencies. It also helps our Food Program focus on the provision of culturally relevant meals and invites kitchen access for Indigenous and community groups looking to process and store local harvests, further improving food security in the DTES.
“We’re serving more people than ever before, and we’re now also able to better meet people’s specific dietary requirements,” said PHS Food Service Senior Manager Andrew Adam. “And it’s all because of dedication and teamwork.”
“We can accommodate individual allergies, gluten intolerance and religious considerations, for example, with specialized equipment and increased capacity.”
These improvements are not only an investment in the sustainability of our critically needed food security programs, but they will also increase the quality of the service for community members we care for.
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