By Stephen Appezzato
RED BANK – After a $12 million overhaul, Lunch Break is ready to meet an unprecedented need for food, clothing and services in the community. The transformation, which spanned 18 months, saw the nonprofit’s footprint double.
With the larger space, remodeled building and increased efficiency, the community hub at 121 Drs. James Parker Blvd. is ready to serve an ever-growing clientele.
The Two River Times caught up with Lunch Break’s staff and volunteers for a behind- the-scenes look at the brand-new facility and the many important services they offer.
Making Meals for All
Entering through the building’s westernmost door, visitors are met with a sleek, welcoming dining hall.
“What we wanted, and I know we achieved, was a nice ambiance for those that are coming in that we serve every day,” said executive director Gwendolyn Love.
The spacious room boasts comfortable seating and tables, updated décor, television screens, Wi-Fi and even a fireplace. Behind a serving bar, Lunch Break’s kitchen staff offer nutritious dine-in and take- out meals.
According to the director of Culinary Operations, Adam Smith, the kitchen serves around 250 meals each day and sends out 700 meals weekly to partner programs, like Family Promise, which works with low-income families to achieve economic stability.
“We’ve seen about a 50% increase from January to January, year-over-year,” Smith said, discussing the growing need for meals in the community. Thankfully, Lunch Break’s new kitchen is ready to meet this need.
During the renovations, Smith and his team worked out of a much smaller kitchen space at St. Anthony of Padua Parish Center on Bridge Avenue in Red Bank.
“We were able to make it work. It was difficult and it took a lot more logistical planning, but we also couldn’t do some of the food at the level that we are currently doing here, as well as quality,” Smith said.
With the doubling of kitchen space and a new storage warehouse, Smith can purchase more goods at a lower cost.
“We have more buying power, we can leverage ourselves a lot better,” reducing the cost of ingredients, he said. Currently the kitchen averages $2.75 a meal. “We’re always trying to get that lower to try and stretch our dollars,” Smith said.
“But, you’d never know because the food is so good,” said Jill Gwydir-Govel, Lunch Break’s director of development.
A key component of Smith’s menu is seasonal ingredients, to ensure freshness and reduce food costs.
“Right now, what we’re focusing on is everything’s from scratch,” he said. “So I can tell you every single ingredient that we put into the food.” With the new space, Smith and his team serve up creative, nutritious meals like continental breakfasts, butternut squash mac and cheese, and even homemade granola with yogurt.
A Plentiful Pantry
Passing through the facility’s welcoming lobby, visitors will find themselves in Lunch Break’s new and improved food pantry. Open six days a week, the client-choice pantry offers a wide range of goods with an emphasis on protein and fresh produce, which are “the two main requests from our clients,” pantry supervisor Beth Sherrard said. The pantry is stocked with donated items, but also purchases some food, like produce, with donation funds.
“That comes from our very generous donors that we have,” said Love.
Alongside the pantry’s two main sources, a small farm in Rumson also donates produce on a weekly basis. Sherrard said it is the start of a pilot program that they hope will lead to similar relationships with other local farmers.
Like the kitchen, the pantry has seen a stark increase in demand. In January 2023, the pantry averaged 52 pick-ups a day. This past January, that number was 86.
“Everybody’s rents are skyrocketing. We just had a family, a woman come in – she was new here. (There are) 12 people living in the house – seven adults and five children – and that’s the only way people can afford to make it,” Sherrard said.
“I think the cost of food is not coming down. I think jobs are hard to come by,” she said.
“It’s the housing issue. It’s the inflation. Food is so expensive,” Love agreed.
Candidly, Love said she did not foresee the sharp rise in need for Lunch Break’s services when the new facility was first proposed. But with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more new clients came in needing help from Lunch Break.
“These are people that immediately had to leave their jobs. They couldn’t go back like all the world did.”
“These people never knew that there was a Lunch Break. They never asked for help before because their jobs were what they thought were ‘secure,’ ” said Love.
Finding Fashion
A short walk downstairs and clients will find themselves at Clara’s Closet, another major program Lunch Break offers. Clara’s Closet is a donation-based, community-driven effort that allocates gently worn clothing to individuals who need it most. The space expanded to incorporate a separate sorting and processing room, more clothing display space and three dressing rooms.
Fatima Carranza and her team of volunteers carefully sort through and display donated goods to offer quality, seasonal clothing for all.
“This space has been amazing, to kind of keep everything in order, and you know, (it) kind of gives me a good estimate on what I need to prepare for the next season,” Carranza said.
Currently Clara’s Closet is running a special drive for prom attire, which will be gifted to high schoolers in April.
“We make sure that everything that we put out is quality stuff,” she said. “We always go by, ‘Is this something that you would give to a loved one?’ ” she said.
Like the kitchen and pantry, Clara’s Closet has served a growing need in the community, both in Red Bank and at the satellite location at Brookdale Community College.
The remodeled Clara’s Closet opened in January. Carranza estimates they now serve 40 families per day in Red Bank.
“It’s definitely jumped from the other temporary spaces that we were at,” she said.
Other Offerings
Meals, groceries and clothing are three of Lunch Break’s largest and well-known services. But with the new facility also comes an expansion of classes, professional advice and counseling services offered to the community. The building’s second floor boasts brand new classrooms and other spaces to offer more financial literacy, ESL, cooking and other programming.
“We look at ourselves now, we’re not a soup kitchen. We’re not just a pantry. We’re a community service organization, in the community, helping all of Monmouth County,” said Love.
A formal opening celebration of the building is scheduled for April 25.
The article originally appeared in the February 29 –March 6, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
