THE FRIENDLY KITCHEN INC

The Friendly Kitchen, Concord’s only soup kitchen, has been a staple in the city for over 40 years feeding those less fortunate. Recognizing that we were not serving many families at our facility and we needed to do more to reach families and seniors struggling with food insecurity, we created our Family Friendly Meal Program.

During the spring of 2021 we piloted the program through a partnership with Merrimack Valley Day Care. The childcare agency had seven families sign up for the program and those families began to receive two prepared meals each week. Shortly after the pilot we extended to include more families within Merrimack Valley Day Care and families utilizing the Boys & Girls Club in Concord. We have also extended our outreach to include families being housed by Friends Emergency Housing and the Crisis Center of Central New Hampshire, as well as families identified through the Concord School District to make our number of families being served to 59. We partnered with Concord Housing to establish a food pantry at their Jenning Drive location which houses very low-income families. We also are sharing food with Horseshoe Pond seniors, NHTI students, and Friends of Forgotten Children as well as other area pantries. In two years, the program distributed over 60,000 meals and over 40,000 pounds of food to those in need.