Who wouldn’t enjoy the opportunity to sample 15 or more hearty soups while helping out a good cause?
Soup’s On 2022 not only appeals to the need for comfort food at this time of year but the $10 entry fee supports The Gathering Place which provides food seven days a week to those in need of a nutritious meal.
It has been roughly ten years since commercial and non-commercial businesses first brought their best soups to the event where they compete for the coveted Golden Ladle Award and the bragging rights that go along with it.
Soup tasters vote for their top favourites.
The recent labour disruption meant high schools were unable to attend this year.
Cole Fournier, representing the Urban Café was kept busy handing out samples of that restaurant’s creamy dill pickle and bacon soup.
“If you like dill pickle chips, you will enjoy the taste,” Fournier grinned.
The restaurant regularly participates.
“It feels great to be back. It is so nice seeing everybody out again enjoying the soups. I’m enjoying the soups and it is for a great cause.”
Also in attendance was Beef N’ Brand executive chef Ashley Bastien.
“We did a cheeseburger chowder with house pickles and cheese,” said Bastien.
“It feels great being back with all these people around. It is nice seeing familiar faces and friendly people and helping out a good cause.”
Dot Beaucage-Kennedy was enjoying sampling the wide selection of soups.
“This is my very first time. I think it is awesome, what a great fundraiser,” said Beaucage-Kennedy.
“I’m enjoying meeting the people, seeing the support, and especially seeing the young people here. I’m really excited that they’re so into it.”
The format it similar to the pre-pandemic years.
“It is kind of nice because we’re trying to go back to where we were. We do have a few new entries this year that either hasn’t been here in a while, or have never been, so that’s exciting” said Gathering Place Executive Director Dennis Chippa.
But the fundraiser did lose some participants, because of the incredible demands on staffing for the restaurants involved.
“We did have some restaurants basically tell us they don’t have the staffing, which is a concern around the restaurant community of course. One of the other changes is we’ve got trained volunteers in some of the places doing soups,” Chippa added.
“So in the past what we would have is the restaurant bring the soup in and then they provide two staff to serve, and now a lot of the restaurants have one staff serving and one of our trained volunteers will be helping. They’re trained in safe food handling.”
It is definitely a transition year for the fundraiser.
“This for some people is something maybe they haven’t done a whole lot of, getting together with other people in a room. So we recognize those numbers will probably be down. Is this going to be the new normal? I don’t know yet. But at least we’re open and we having something and we’re celebrating that we are finally having this kind of thing,” Chippa noted.
Given the current state of the economy, The Gathering Place is hoping to raise in the neighbourhood of five to six thousand dollars.
“The money goes towards the operational needs. So, it goes to everything from some of the food we do purchase, to purchasing food containers, and keeping the lights on, things like that. “
Like everyone else, The Gathering Place has taken a hit when it comes to increased food costs with smaller donations, a reflection of high inflation rates.
“We have a fantastic food rescue program but we do still have to buy stuff so that impacts us as well. It also impacts us at the other end of the scale.”
While the actual number of donors may not be down, the size of the donations is.
“So somebody who might have donated $200, now it is $150 or $100. So that is where we’ve seen the trend,” Chippa noted.
The question then becomes, how to make up for that shortfall.
“So there’s not as much money coming in, and our prices are up, so we’re going to have to make some adjustments going into the New Year.”
The demand for the Soup Kitchen increased by 30 per cent in September alone.
“We used to average about 150 for a dinner serving and now it is 175. We used to average maybe 100 for lunch, now it is 125. Breakfast is up as well. We tend to see a lot more families at supper. We’re seeing a lot more women, we’re seeing a lot more elderly people and we’re seeing a lot of people we just haven’t seen before.”
Despite its many obstacles, The Gathering Place is still a seven-day-a-week operation.
“We have gone to bag lunches on Saturday and Sunday. Part of it is trying to be proactive in reducing our carbon footprint, and the cost of containers and utensils on a weekend goes up, so why not just eliminate that? We’ve got to make sure people are fed especially on the weekends. “
Over the course of a week, the soup kitchen provides five breakfasts, seven lunches, and four evening meals.
One of the cost concerns going into the winter is trying to find affordable, biodegradable containers in keeping with regulations around single-use plastics.
“The price of biodegradable containers is incredibly high. We’ll have to make some adjustments. We want to get through Soup’s On and then we’re going to sit down and talk about what our January 2023 will look like as far as how we do the meals. We won’t reduce the number of meals, it will still be the same meal, just how are we going to serve it?” wondered Chippa.
“I have checked and there is no program to offset the cost increase for things like biodegradable containers. There is no program where you can get that kind of compensation.”
The soup kitchen is currently open for dine-in meals.
“But a lot of the folks don’t like dine-in, they’re more content to take it to go and I don’t want to them ‘Sorry you can’t.’ We can’t force people to come in and eat, so we have to be aware of that going forward. That is one of the costs, but of course, the utilities are going to go up and food might go up again.”
