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Syracuse Rescue Mission Eliminates Long Food Lines Rescue Mission Brings Hope to the Hungry for the Holidays

By Marsha Augustin

(Rescue Mission Volunteer)
“Well before I think it was organized chaos
but now I think it’s slightly less.”

(Reporter)
Louis Fournier has been volunteering with Rescue Mission for a year and says this new space is different from the old one.

(Rescue Mission Volunteer)
The new appliances, it’s so much bigger and cleaner, its just a lot of room. It just seems more organized than it was before.

(Reporter)
Victoria Shires Chief Development Officer for Rescue Missions said, they didn’t have enough space for the people they were serving and wanted to eliminate the waiting.

(Victoria Shires)
“They facility was originally designed to hold
no more than 100 people per meal, and what we found was that over time we were serving up to 250 people per meal.”)

{Reporter}
Rescue Mission has a new dining room space that has 125 more seats to serve people. Now there’s no need to wait on long lines out the door.

{Reporter}
Shires said at that point they knew they needed to make upgrades to their dining room space and kitchen.

(Victoria Shires)
“We have a brand new range unit, that’s super important since we were cooking on propane burners, we have new mixers, new serving lines, new hot and cold equipment, a much expanded freezer and cooler area, a bigger dry storage food section.”

SYRACUSE,  N.Y. (NCC News) – Rescue Mission has a brand new dining space that has additional seating for 125 people. They have more than doubled the seating capacity, to accommodate 225 people. They also renovated their kitchen and upgraded all of the appliances. “The facility was both expanded with new construction and renovated it’s existing space,” the chief development officer of Rescue Mission , Victoria Shires said.  “We had to do this in order to double the capacity for eating as well as more space for a new kitchen to really make it a proper commercial kitchen that will help prepare meals faster.”

They have 24 volunteers in their kitchen prepping and serving three free meals a day.  With the new kitchen and dining space they expect to eliminate long lines of people waiting outside the doors to be served meals. “We’ve added a brand new range unit and it’s super important because we were cooking on propane burners,” Shires said.  “We have new mixers, new serving lines, new hot and cold equipment, a much expanded freezer and cooler area and a bigger dry good storage section.”

Louis Fourier has been volunteering with Rescue Mission for a year and said, this brand new food center helps things run a lot more smoothly and organized.

“It’s amazing how much of a system there was in place before and how they made do but with this new kitchen and dining room it’s unbelievable,” Fourier said.

“In addition because the dining room is bigger we can seat more people at one time and waiting for a table to turn and get wiped down before the next person sits down is relatively non existent,” Shires said.   “You can bring in all those people from the cold very quickly.”

After you eat you are also welcome to sit and relax by the fire place, which is also an addition to the new dining space. “It’s not so much eat and have to leave, ” Shires said, “Eat, let it digest, sit relax for a moment.”

“Coming to have a nice warm meal in a beautiful space like this really helps to boost the dignity and self worth of the people we serve in the community,” Shires said.

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