Mobile soup kitchen to take over former Tim Hortons location on Goyeau
A donor has purchased the building for the Soup Shack
A meal program for hungry people in Windsor will be moving from a trailer to a building on Goyeau Street at Wyandotte.
The Soup Shack has been serving around 130 bowls of soup each night for the past two years, according to Rodger Fordham, the executive director of Feeding Windsor Essex, the organization that operates it.
It was previously stationed on University Avenue next to All Saints Church.
But a donor recently purchased the former Tim Hortons building at 636 Goyeau, across from the downtown McDonalds, and has been readying the property for the Soup Shack to take over, Fordham said.
"There was a whole lot of work orders against the building when he bought it, and they've all been satisfied," he said.
"[He] put in a new roof, HVAC, bathrooms, kitchen. He bought us a complete package from a Subway that was closing — so freezer, fridge, all the stuff you'd find from a Subway is now in that building."
Feeding Windsor Essex moved the current Soup Shack trailer to the parking lot of the building over the weekend and will continue serving soup there from 7 to 9 p.m. each night for another couple of weeks until the indoor location is ready, Fordham said.
Operating out of the building will double the cost to run the Soup Shack from about $75,000 per year to around $150,000 per year, he added.
So the organization is looking for community partners who may want to help run the shack and possibly operate other services out of the location during the daytime hours.
The Soup Shack served approximately 50,000 meals last year, Fordham said.
"Probably about 65 to 75 per cent [of the] people that show up every day are our homeless population," he said.
"But we get the seniors that come down or the single mom [that] wants to give her two kids a bowl of soup before they go to bed, and they're welcome. We don't turn them away."
The soup, he added, is both nutritious and delicious.
"I grew up in the restaurant business," Fordham said.
"When I was 10 years old, I had an apron on. There's a million things I can't do, but one of the things I can do is I can cook."