Blanchet House grapples with growing demand during the coronavirus emergency
Six days a week, three times a day, Blanchet House dishes up close to 1,000 free hot meals at its dining hall on the corner of Northwest Glisan Street and Third Avenue in Old Town Portland.
Over the past two weeks, as the coronavirus pandemic has rattled Portland, it has watched demand for the meals it serves nearly double.
At the same time, it has seen donations from its usual sources of food dwindle.
“We’re really concerned about running out of food,” Julie Showers, Blanchet House’s communications manager, told Street Roots. She said part of the problem is that the nonprofit’s typical donors, grocery stores, have less to give.
“They don’t have excess food like they used to,” she said, “so we’re getting much less food from our food donors.”
The nonprofit makes purchases from the Oregon Food Bank when supplies run low, but with increased demand, it’s worried about its ability to stay stocked.
On Monday, Blanchet House served 1,700 meals, with a line stretching for blocks down Third Avenue. This made social distancing difficult, she said, given the many challenges facing the population the dining hall serves.
Showers said many new diners are coming from Portland’s east side, where some social services have closed. As nonprofits shutter, many may be referring people to Blanchet House, she said, but it’s hard to tell exactly why demand has gone up so dramatically.
Now that all prepared food must be served as take-out, under orders from Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, the dining hall has opened two windows, one for food and one for beverages, where volunteers hand out bagged meals to people lined up on the sidewalk.
“If people want to help us, we really need to-go containers and brown paper bags, desperately,” Showers said. “We can’t order them like we used to because everything is backed up right now, as far as deliveries. So, if people can source to-go containers and brown bags locally, and drop them off, that would be wonderful.”
While the future is uncertain, more than 50,000 pounds of food was donated to Blanchet House last week from closing restaurants and cancelled events.
“We stored what we could, shared what we couldn’t with (Portland) Rescue Mission, Stone Soup, then prepared everything else as we could to serve to the public,” she said.
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“We’re in regular contact with the Rescue Mission because they are also feeding to-go meals. We both have similar concerns — our lines are getting longer,” Showers said.
Portland Rescue Mission made a plea to the community on Friday, asking for donations because “resources are dwindling quickly,” its spokesperson Mike Deckon told Street Roots.
Among other asks, the Mission needs “support to purchase a greater portion of food ingredients because restaurants and foodservice suppliers are unable to donate about 32,000 pounds of food donations each month,” according to the nonprofit's announcement.
Sisters Of The Road, which also serves meals to unhoused people in Old Town, is not having the same issue. Melissa Lang, development manager, said her organization purchases its ingredients from Aloha and accepts food donations from businesses such as Bob's Red Mill. She is concerned, however, that the recession spurred by COVID-19 could affect the nonprofit’s bottom line if individual monetary donations decline or businesses that donate to the nonprofit are negatively impacted.
“We are foreseeing being hit really hard,” she said.
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St. Francis Dining Hall, in Southeast Portland, reported getting more fresh vegetables than usual from its grocery store donors because people are shopping differently — purchasing beans and rice instead of produce. The hall’s assistant director, Diane Horne, said she’s only seen a “little uptick” in new faces.
Showers said that along with many restaurant closures has come a wave of new volunteers — newly unemployed chefs and other food service and event staff, looking for a way to help.
Anyone able to donate large quantities of food or to-go materials to Blanchet House can call 503-241-4340. Financial donations can be made on its website.
This story has been updated to include comments from Portland Rescue Mission.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
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