MANKATO, Minn. (AP) - Nearly 15 years after its creation, Minnesota State University’s Campus Kitchen is a bustling place.
It’s where the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the Boys and Girls Club are spread.
It’s the place that treats homeless folks to pasta e fagioli from Olive Garden, biscuits and baked potatoes from Red Lobster, or maybe chili made with barbacoa beef from Chipotle.
It’s the conduit for getting Panera bread or baked goods from Gustavus Adolphus College into food-shelf packages in Mankato and Mapleton.
“We are bursting at the seams,” said Karen Anderson, who manages the Campus Kitchen. “If we had a bigger space, we’d fill it. There’s definitely a need in the community.”
One of the first in a nationwide program that now includes nearly 50 campuses, MSU’s Campus Kitchen rents space from Crossroads Campus Ministry, a Lutheran student center in Mankato. The workspace is small, there’s not even a stove, and staffing is provided pretty much exclusively by student volunteers, but Campus Kitchen has filled a lot of hungry stomachs over the years.
“I’m so blessed, so lucky that we have some really reliable students that I count on,” Anderson told the Mankato Free Press.
Since 2005, the volunteers have put together and delivered 89,148 meals (not counting those from a roughly two-year period where records weren’t kept.) They’ve also delivered just under 175,000 pounds of additional food - larger containers that are distributed to families through area food shelves or to college students in need of a meal.
It’s not a bad trick for an organization that doesn’t have an oven or even a stovetop to work with. The key is letting others do the cooking. Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Chipotle offer up food that has been prepared but not served.
It might be lasagna from Olive Garden, biscuits or baked potatoes from Red Lobster, soups from either place, the wide variety of taco and burrito meats from Chipotle, loaves of bread and baked desserts from the Gustavus cafeteria. Panera provides bread that hasn’t sold by the end of the day.
Instead of tossing good food in the garbage at closing time, the businesses send it to the Campus Kitchen where it’s quickly labeled, dated and stored in large freezers.
One student leader works as the meal-planner, tracking the variety of foods that have been donated and dreaming up combinations of entrees, sides and a dessert. Volunteers thaw the food and divide it into healthy-sized servings. Others pack it into clamshell meal containers. And drivers get the meals to places like Theresa House, Maxfield Place, the Welcome Inn, the Salvation Army and The Reach - where homeless adults, families and teens find themselves eating some of the same tasty food that southern Minnesotans are served when they treat themselves to a dinner out.
Larger quantities of food are also offered through the Campus Cupboard food shelf to MSU students, and bread is sent to a new student-focused food pantry at South Central College. There are also sack lunches provided through the Campus Kitchen’s “Little Fridge” to any student looking for a meal, no questions asked.
“We stock that on a daily basis,” Anderson said, noting that many cash-strapped students often don’t have enough money to cover their food budget. “You find that students are cobbling together meals from different sources.”
Even without a stove, the meal-planner comes up with recipes, too, Anderson said. For instance, she might see beef from Chipotle in the freezer and canned tomatoes and beans on the shelves and have a crew mix it up into chili. Baked potatoes are turned into potato salad. Cheddar Bay biscuits from Red Lobster can become biscuits and gravy.
From the start of last semester through November, 262 volunteers worked 425 hours at Campus Kitchen. Fourteen are shift leaders who oversee the assembly-line-like operation and train the newcomers.
“They’re all MSU students,” Anderson said. “During the breaks, when the students are away, then we have people from the community who come and help out. … My family comes in and helps out the week of Christmas.”
During the semester and summer breaks, Campus Kitchen doesn’t do individual meals. The focus then is on distributing the larger containers of food - Ziploc bags of soup or cooked meat, along with full loaves of bread - go to the Maple River Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, Mankato’s Echo Food Shelf and the Open Door Health Clinic.
Last year, the new Boys and Girls Club (since renamed MY Place) was added. For the kids there, it’s a weekly lunch of PB&J, fresh veggie snacks and usually a sweet treat.
“They always ask, ‘What’s in the bag?’” said MSU senior Hunter Kelsey, who loads 60 sack lunches into his GMC Yukon and delivers them to the kids. “And they feel really excited. … Some families, that meal really makes a difference. So you really feel good about it.”
Before Kelsey makes his delivery and gets to see the faces of the recipients, Sophia Hoiseth and her team of four or five volunteers spend two hours on the peanut-butter-and-jelly assembly line.
Hoiseth heard about the Campus Kitchen during summer orientation, and she knew the statistic that 80% of college students are at times “food insecure” - meaning they’re uncertain where their next meal is coming from. So she went to Anderson and offered to volunteer.
“She said, ‘We need a shift leader. I said, ‘Sure.’”
The weekly commitment never felt like a burden, Hoiseth said, partly because many of the volunteers are international students picking up volunteer hours required by the scholarship aid they receive. PB&J assembly, it seems, leads to good conversation.
“It was super easy to talk about their culture and what they think about living here,” she said.
And there’s a sense of accomplishment in knowing that 60 kids will soon be enjoying the results of the group’s labor.
“I think most people will feel better walking out than coming in,” Hoiseth said.
A third-year political science major, Hoiseth is working on a minor in nonprofit leadership. She hopes to do even more work for the Campus Kitchen before wrapping up her degree, including producing a promotional video about the organization’s work that she believes will lead to more donors and restaurants making contributions.
“So then it can be bigger and better,” she said.
Kelsey said he first volunteered because his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, requires service hours and had previously raised funds for the Boys and Girls Club. Providing money to a cause is great, but there’s something even more fulfilling about giving hours - and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - to those who might need them.
“It’s just a bunch of self-worth in helping others,” said Kelsey, who will be entering his final semester before graduating with a computer information technology degree. “A lot of people have too much time sitting around and they should get up and do something with it.”
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