Soup with a side of community support

The Kenai Peninsula Food Bank hosted a sold-out crowd on Saturday for its 30th Annual Soup Supper fundraiser, held for the first time in the recently opened Soldotna Field House.

A variety of soups were on offer alongside auction items, a photo booth, and tables filled with bowls locally crafted by the Kenai Potters Guild.

Speaking before the first scoops of soup were offered to attendees, O’Reilly said the food bank relies on and benefits from generous support from volunteers and from businesses in the community. He cited major donations received in the past year from Home Depot and Marathon, but said the Soup Supper is the food bank’s largest event and most significant direct appeal to the community for support.

The food bank, he said, is “really a logistics organization.” They accept donations and salvage food and then work to distribute it. The Kenai Peninsula Borough provides a unique challenge in that it covers such a wide area. O’Reilly said they work to get food to every corner of the peninsula, including to communities in the east, the south, and across Cook Inlet.

“Everywhere there is a need, we’re there,” he said.

That need can be greater than people realize. A table at the field house on Saturday included an example of what people experiencing food insecurity can receive “in any given month” through federal programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. There was not much to see. O’Reilly said they supplement those offerings with vegetables from the food bank’s garden; meat and produce from local grocery stores and more.

Part of bringing people in to an event like the Soup Supper, O’Reilly said in a conversation with the Clarion after his welcoming remarks ahead of the start of the dinner, is showing people and explaining to people what the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank does. Where most food banks are “food in, food out,” O’Reilly said the local food bank also provides a diner where people come in for food service. The food bank also partners with organizations across the Kenai Peninsula to meet the needs of people experiencing food insecurity.

“We do everything,” he said. “We fly turkeys to Tyonek.”

The Kenai Peninsula Food Bank facilitates, O’Reilly said, both the intake and distribution of roughly a million and a half pounds of food annually.

For more information about the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank and its services, or to donate, visit kpfoodbank.org.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.