Turbocharged Community Soup Kitchen Plans Return To Indoor Dining

The word Monday on Broadway was: Salmon, kale … and a side dish of hope.

That word emanated from the Community Soup Kitchen, where Joshua Watkins and his crew of 12 were preparing 465 to-go meals for hungry people in New Haven and Hamden — and looking to the day soon when they can welcome people back inside Christ Church to share meals together in person.

“We’re getting closer to getting back to normal,” Watkins said. ​“We’re really excited to let our guests come back inside.”

Watkins, 30, took over as the executive director of the Community Soup Kitchen on Broadway a year and a half ago, with big plans to increase quality of food and reach hungry people in new ways, including beyond the city’s borders.

Watkins took over during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he and his staff have shifted to a ​“meals on wheels” program. Monday alone, approximately 300 meals were being prepared to be delivered locally just for Broadway’s location alone. In addition to that, 85 meals were delivered to the New Haven warming center, 50 meals were prepared to go to the Keefe Center in Hamden, and 30 meals were made to go to the Clarion Hotel on Whitney Avenue in Hamden, where tenants displaced by a recent fire are staying.

Watkins said that it has been challenging running the kitchen during the pandemic. His entire staff is fully vaccinated and their mask mandate has remained in place. Watkins said his staff can push out 300 meals in 30 minutes. But the goal is to reopen the doors to the public. 

“It’s been up and down,” Watkins said during a conversation on the ​“World on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s ​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. ​“All of the staff here is fully vaccinated. We still have our mask mandate in place. But we want people to be able to come in and feel like they’re in a restaurant environment.”

The goal is to open and welcome the public by April as the Omicron-driven Covid-19 surge dissipates and public restrictions are lifted.

“I’m actually putting together a plan right now to give over to my board to discuss what reopening is going to look like,” Watkins said. ​“We wanted to call over to the health department so they could look over our plan and see if there’s anything that they could add to it. Then from there, we’re hoping to open in April. That’s my hope. After that, we might throw some large barbecues.”

Monday’s menu included salmon and cod with potatoes and sauteed kale, caesar salad that comes with bread (vegetarian option), and veggie burgers. Other days, the menu has included lobster mac & cheese. Definitely not your average soup kitchen dining experience.

Watkins said food donations soared during the pandemic, helping him expand the food kitchen’s reach.

“Everyone gave us so much that we became very innovative with all of our supplies,” Watkins said. ​“The question became: ​‘What do we do with all of this?’ We called our friends in Hamden, West Haven, and we just started donating all of their items out to everybody. That started to turn into more of a partnership by working together more and more.”

Watkins said they went from providing 75,000 meals in 2020 to 330,000 in 2021.

One of those partnerships was a pop-up soup kitchen at the Keefe Community Center in Hamden during the height of the pandemic.

“We did that about every Wednesday for about six months through a pilot program that went pretty well,” Watkin said. ​“We were handing out about 350 meals or so a day, when we did that.”

Now his team and head chef Herald Glass arrive as early as 5 a.m. and finish all of the meals by 11 a.m. before making deliveries. Glass, who has been working at the Community Soup Kitchen for 37 years, praised the transition at CSK since Watkins took over..

“The morale has changed, new orders, and he came here and done wiped everything old in here and replaced everything,” Herald said. ​“A lot more meals. I really do enjoy it. I love my job, and I love working for this man.”

Watkins said that they want to provide people more than just a meal.

“We also think about the morning time and at night. Our goal is to stock up our guests for an entire month,” Watkins said. ​“We feel like if they have all of the supplies that they need then that would allow them to be able to focus on other things like looking for housing and employment.”

Other goals involve opening a food pantry with community members, or a mini-food bank.

People are able to grab-to-go meals from the Community Soup Kitchen from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“It’s all about bringing the community back to our building,” Watkins said. ​“It’s been a long pandemic season, and hopefully we’re reaching the verge of all of this being over. I think it’ll be amazing to bring that community aspect back to the kitchen so we can understand more directly what the issues are.”