Six months ago, a new and unique restaurant quietly opened on Bozeman’s North Seventh Avenue. Now occupying the long-vacant Frontier Pies building, the Gallatin Valley Food Bank’s Community Café serves dinner to an average of 2,000 people every month. Everyone is welcome, and no one is required to pay for the satisfying meals served by local volunteers every night of the week. The Community Café is aptly named; the Food Bank (GVFB), a number of churches and volunteer organizations, local grocery stores, and all the area residents that support GVFB have made serving free, warm meals in a comfortable atmosphere a reality and a true community effort.

On Thursday, Tom and Connie Keyes and Gina Albini served a hearty shepherd’s pie, tossed salad, and orange slices to several patrons. All three, from Resurrection University Parish, were volunteering for their third time. Their church is just one of several churches and organizations that take turns sending volunteers to staff the Café, which is open seven days a week from 5p.m. to 7p.m. These volunteers insist they are just neighbors helping neighbors. Albini volunteers because “it sounded like a good thing to do.” And, she is not alone in her thinking; she said 85 people from her church have signed up to help.

The Community Café was established because of a “need we saw in the community,” according to GVFB Operations Manager Jill Holder. The Amos House had been providing warm meals to community members, so its closure left a large need. The weak economy also created a much larger need; GVFB saw a 16% increase in the number of Emergency Food Boxes it distributed in 2011. GVFB was barely able to keep up with the increase in food insecurity and started working on ways to reach more people who needed assistance. The Community Café opened on March 19, 2012.

Right now, The Community Café does not have a permit to cook food on site. Meals are prepared in Food Bank kitchens and brought to the restaurant. However, future plans that involve the installation of a full kitchen are currently under review. Ultimately, Holder hopes GVFB can install a kitchen in the Café that will serve as a central kitchen for all of the Human Resource Development Council’s programs. “We have dreams for the facility, we can’t just stop there,” Holder added as she described the possibility of turning the building into a training center for homeless people in transitional housing and young people in need of employment.

The Community Café is just one of the many ways that GVFB is working to diversify so that it can reach everyone in need of food assistance in our community. The GVFB has programs running throughout the year. It provides an average of 1,364 Emergency Food Boxes every month, which feed approximately 3,000 people. The month of September 2012 was the first month that there was a decrease in the number of food boxes distributed, a change Holder attributes to efforts like the Community Café. “I’d like to think some of these other programs are helping,” she said.

GVFB’s Summer Lunch program served over 8,000 lunches to kids under 18 this past summer. Lunch was served five days a week at four parks throughout the county, and meals often included fun and instructional activities for the kids. One week, kids learned how to make butter. “They learn all sorts of things about food,” Holder said. During the school year, GVFB organizes KidsPack, which last year provided supplemental food every week to more than 475 kids in 12 schools. Middle school students volunteering with the One Million Ways organization often pack the bags of food for KidsPack, so “kids are helping kids,” Holder explained.

GVFB was also one of ten organizations in the U.S. to receive the AARP Foundation Grant for Food Security for Seniors. The grant will be used to help seniors, particularly those in rural areas, access more affordable produce and increase their health. GVFB partnered with Montana State University to bring fresh produce to rural seniors using a mobile food truck. The grant is also being used to connect seniors to other programs that will benefit their overall health. GVFB also reaches seniors with its Senior Grocery program, which delivers groceries to more than 350 low-income seniors in three counties every month.

The Community Café and GVFB’s other programs are always in need of volunteer help. Holder said that anyone interested in helping meet the Food Bank’s mission to “improve food security throughout the Gallatin Valley” should contact GVFB’s volunteer coordinator through the organization’s website: http://www.gallatinvalleyfoodbank.org.

Participants and volunteers are needed for the sixth annual Huffing for Stuffing Run on Thanksgiving Day. This year’s event will prove to be monumental with more than 10,000 people registered and more than $100,000 raised over the event’s six-year history. Volunteers are also need to prepare holiday food boxes, and anyone can start a Gift of Food holiday food drive. To find out how, visit http://www.thegiftoffood.org.

GVFB relies heavily on holiday donations. The support it receives at this time of year sustains the organization almost until the postal drive in the spring, according to Holder. The Cat-Griz food drive is also part of the fundraising, or foodraising, effort during the fall. In 2011, the food drive used the long-standing rivalry between MSU and U of M to donate more than 50,000 pounds of food to GVFB. Contributions from local grocery stores are essential as well, and make up about half of the donations received by the Food Bank. “We are so lucky. The stores here are awesome,” Holder said.
No matter the season, the GVFB is offering assistance and could use some help. “We just want to keep [the Café] open for everyone,” said Lori Christenson, GVFB Program Manager. So, whoever said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” has obviously never been to Bozeman, where neighbors help neighbors in the hopes that no one has to go hungry.

Sarah Cairoli is very proud to live in a community that makes every effort to ensure that everyone is taken care of. She can be reached at scairoli30@hotmail.com Photos by Gwen Dodge