A typical soupie.

A day in the life of a soup kitchen.

I thought it were about time I explained to you all exactly what goes on at a soup kitchen and before. Its not just as simple as running the soup kitchen, there's loads to do.

A few days before a Saturday night soup kitchen we will attempt to organize our rota. Its not always easy though, we always try to secure volunteers before the day of soup kitchen so we can organize who's doing what and make sure our volunteers realize whats going to go on and they receive our guidelines.

So with a rota organised and peoples roles sorted, our job starts on Saturday morning. On Saturday morning we will go to the supermarket, (Anastasia and Rachel) and buy everything we need for that evening. We are usually doing hot food, so were in the supermarket filling our trolley to the brim full of fresh food. We do all our meals from scratch, nothing comes out of a packet. Last week we cooked a fresh spicy vegetable curry. So our trolley was filled with Aubergine, Potatoes, Onions, Chili's, peppers, mushrooms, beans, celery, rice, lentils and curry paste.

We buy 6 bottles of water for 99p in Lidles so we grab around ten packets of water. There pretty heavy !

If were making sandwiches at home we also buy as many loaves of bread as we can. We buy the cheap bread, its 50 p a loaf. For our sand which fillers we tend to do wafer thin ham and mustard, wafer thin chicken, Cheese and garlic spread and plane cheese spread. We have a vegetarian girl who comes to our soup kitchen so we always make her separate sandwiches, usually cheese and tomato. She really appreciates the fact we go to the extra effort. We also have a man who comes to our soup kitchen who is gluten free so we buy him special bread and make him his own sandwiches so he doesn't get sick. As he cant have the biscuits or cakes we hand out we also make sure we have gluten free cake each week. Both of these people are really happy that we do our best to meet their needs.

We also buy chocolate bars, crisps, cereal bars and cakes if no other volunteer is covering this.

If we don't have any pots left or cutlery / cups we have to go to the shop and buy them... See how busy we are !?

Right then, that's all that done, now to go home and start the food.

We'll get home and bring all the bags into the house and unload all the shopping. All the shopping tends to take up all the space in the kitchen so it gets a bit hectic. We'll start prepping our veg, chopping two sacks of onions, two sacks of potato and crying the whole time. Cos of the onions, not cos im sad doing the soupie ! We start to cook everything in our massive catering pan, the food starts to smell lush, I do like a good curry ! While the curry simmers away we will start on sandwiches if were also making them that week.

For sandwiches we set up a little conveyor belt type system. Get the whole loaf out and spread the butter on every piece. Then put some ham on it, then a top, then pile them all up, make sure they don't topple over like that old game you used to play as kids. JengaaAAAAAAAA.... Once there all stacked up and cut we then wrap them all individually in foil. Its a timely job for sure.



BREATH ANASTASIA , BREATH.


Once all the sandwiches are made we can chill out for a while... Kinda... chill out for  a while as well as sorting clothes for the evening... The homeless always need clothes you see.

Righto, clothes sorted. Now time to start potting up the hot food. We pot up in foil containers. Damn they get reaaaalllly hot. Mum (Rachel) dishes the food into the pots and I put all the lids on then put them into our polystyrene container. This takes ages. And the pots burn your fingers. EVERY TIME.

After potting up I'll start on the dreaded task of making the hot tea and coffee flasks. I hate this. I have to boil the kettle around 12 times to fill them up and as I have the concentration span of a nat I always do them wrong, sometimes we end up with three teas of two black coffees, no white coffees, and one tea !

Teas and coffees finally done. Correctly. Now its time to load up the car. Now we dont have a very long garden path, but we still have to take a few trips up and down loading all the hot meals into the car, the flasks, the crisp, the chocolate, the cakes, the shoes, the toiletries and of course those dreaded hot drink flasks. Oh I hate doing them.

Were off. Were on the road. We live in Mudeford and our soup kitchen is in Bournemouth. When we arrive at our location we usually have four or five guys come and help us unload the car, there all really helpful, its great. We set up with our table and all the volunteers get into their roles. Each week a volunteer is given a 'job' at the soup kitchen.

Jobs are : Serving hot meals, handing out cutlery along the line, handing out sandwiches, handing out crisps and cake, hot drinks, water, clothes and toiletries.

Everything is done in a line.


First stop food. The rough sleepers all que, and on the shout of go were started. The rough sleepers are given there hot meal first, then they walk along the tables and take everything else they need, finishing off with a hot drink and a bottle of water.

The rough sleepers then sit down and enjoy their hot meals, then some of them will have a look for some clothes or toiletries.

Of course there's chats !

We all love a good chat. Sometimes Im so busy cos everyone wants to talk, im being pulled in every direction possible but by the end of the night everyone has had an equal amount of time chatting and everyone leaves happy.

Once everyone has been served a hot meal, and theres no more people coming, if we have more hot meals we shout ' Second meals' and anyone that wants a second hot meal can grab one... which is usually a lot of people !

The rest of the soup kitchen is generally us just chatting to the rough sleepers, making sure everyone's okay, chatting about how they can get help with addictions and getting off the streets. Sometimes there's tears, there's always laughs and there's definitely always HUGS !

I hope this has given you some insight into what its like running a soup kitchen.

Big thanks to all my wonderful volunteers who also cook at home, who make bundles of sandwiches, who bake us cakes and who support us week after week.