“If we didn’t feed these people no one would.”
Prior to the pandemic, the San Pedro chapter of Meals on Wheels fed about 35 people on average. Now they feed 125 people five days a week, 50 of them for free.
The reason they were able to expand was because of government funding that was available when the pandemic started. Now that money has run out.
“We are desperately trying to raise funds,” said Susan McKenna, president of the board of Meals on Wheels San Pedro. “This tiny organization is feeding 50 people for free every five days a week.”
Meals on Wheels San Pedro only has two paid employees, a chef and an office administrator, and they’re both part-time. Everybody else is a volunteer, and there are between 100 and 120 of them.
“It’s totally a volunteer-driven organization,” McKenna said. “Of course, all the board [members] are volunteers. And at this point, with finances being the way they are, the board members, I can say every single one of them has a task that they do that we couldn’t afford to pay people for.”
This includes a board member who is a graphic designer, who is in the process of designing a new website and a woman who runs a marketing company, who has been helping write grant applications.
“It’s a lot of micro-fundraising, because we’re all very busy,” McKenna said. “We don’t really have staff, or those people you’d find at a lot of nonprofits.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, the San Pedro chapter of Meals on Wheels got funding from Council District 15 and the Los Angeles County Supervisors. But that funding dried up in November 2021. Prior to the pandemic, it relied mainly on private donations.
“When I first joined the board, four or five years ago, Meals on Wheels historically had not actually asked for funding,” McKenna said. “We’re an extremely frugal organization. So, we had just private donations. And they would occasionally get a little chunk of money, but that was it. As a board, they had not ever applied for grants or sought out funding sources.”
McKenna said that since December, that has been a big learning curve for the board, seeking out sponsors and other sources of funding. While they have not been wildly successful, they have recently received funding from the three San Pedro neighborhood councils.
McKenna said some of their clients have no support structure.
“They are mostly seniors, and mostly homebound,” McKenna said.
While Meals on Wheels has always been a paid service, some clients are charged $8.50 per day for their meals, McKenna says the meals are heavily subsidized, as what they charge does not cover all expenses. But about 50 of their clients are sponsored, and do not pay anything.
When the funding ran out, the board considered scaling back its operation.
McKenna and the chapter’s chef, Mike Caccavalla, called everyone who the organization was feeding for free, and warned them the program might change.
“It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do,” McKenna said. “To talk to these people that have just no options. And so, it didn’t take very long for us to start down that list before it became apparent that if we didn’t feed these people no one would.”
Not every client gets food all five days, some only need it one day a week, or three days a week. The volunteers deliver two meals each day, a hot meal, and a cold one. In addition, the chapter recently started a program with the LA Food Bank, which will deliver a box of groceries to houses of Meals on Wheels clients once a month.
“If you are homebound, and you can’t get out to the other food donors, it’s very nice to have a box of groceries in the house,” McKenna said.
McKenna said the chapter is mindful of things like too much sodium and fat, and has been moving away from prepared foods to making food from scratch.
While it can be hard to keep track of so many clients’ likes and dislikes, Caccavalla said he tries to appease them as much as he can.
Caccavalla said he is supposed to work five hours a day, but usually it turns into more than that.
“Certain things that can get done, can only get done in the afternoons,” Caccavalla said. “Today I’m behind because we had our bakers come in to bake up the fresh … cakes that our clients are going to get this week.”
Caccavalla said that he and others make it a point to try to go out on delivery routes to speak with the clients.
Caccavalla spoke of something that happened a week prior, when he went to drop off a meal to a client after hours, because the client wasn’t there when a driver initially tried to deliver it, and the client did not leave a cooler outside.
“I dropped it off after hours, and spent an hour and a half at his house, just talking to him,” Caccavalla said.
Meals on Wheels San Pedro buys food from big distributors, but also receives donations. It gets produce from Feed and Be Fed, as well as food donations from the YWCA. Restaurants and bakeries in San Pedro support the chapter as well, including The Chori-Man and Babouch Moroccan Restaurant.
“When our kitchen had to close for some work, Babouch [Moroccan Restaurant], in COVID let us use their kitchen during the day, and then they cooked during the night, for absolutely no rent,” McKenna said. “The generosity of regular people is what sustains San Pedro Meals on Wheels.”
While the chapter never stopped serving people, it did have to change drastically when the pandemic began. It had to move its volunteers outside, as it could not use as many inside.
Its volunteers include office workers, people who take carts downstairs, and kitchen volunteers. In addition, there are drivers and delivery people, who will take the food to the clients.
“Routes can take from, depending on your familiarity and the distance, one to two hours,” McKenna said. “So, there’s a significant amount of driving. And we’re just immensely grateful to those volunteers who do that.”
Meals on Wheels San Pedro operates out of the First Presbyterian Church of San Pedro. It has been there since its founding 50 years ago. The chapter pays rent for the kitchen, but McKenna said it is not much. She said if they weren’t paying so little for rent, they would not be able to feed as many people.
The chapter mainly delivers to San Pedro, but has clients in Rancho Palos Verdes and Wilmington as well.
McKenna said that some of the volunteers have volunteered to pay for clients.
“Because of a whole lot of generosity, a very practical sort of generosity, small donations, and produce, and goods, we’ve been able to keep it going,” McKenna said.