Be comfortable! T-shirts and jeans are fine. Please do not wear:

• Clothing with inappropriate or offensive sayings, characters, pictures or designs.
• Very short shorts/skirts, or shirts that expose your midriff.
• Sandals or other open-toe shoes—hot soup can be spilled or heavy items dropped!

We’ll provide aprons, hairnets, and gloves, which everyone working with the food must wear; if you don’t want to wear a hairnet, you can bring your baseball cap, bandana, or some other type of hat.

Yes, volunteers must sign up online in advance to ensure that we have enough volunteers but not too many: if too many come, people often feel they aren’t needed and that they’ve wasted their time. Please also note that we have the fortunate circumstance of being a very well-known volunteer site and that, especially during the school year, we often book weeks in advance. It is best to schedule your volunteer date as far in advance as possible.

For the morning shift, volunteers of all ages are welcome. For the afternoon shift, we require that volunteers be at least 14 years old.

The AM shift is meal prep for the 1000+ meals that we’ll be serving in the afternoon. You won’t be cooking food. Instead, you’ll be:

• Pouring cups of juice, buttering slices of bread, chopping fruit and vegetables
• Rolling utensils in napkins
• Setting up and cleaning tables and chairs

The PM shift is the meal service. You’ll be performing tasks such as:

• Putting hot meal items (entrée, bread, juice, coffee, dessert, etc.) on trays
• Working at food stations giving out extras—e.g., coffee, bread, water, etc.
• Washing, rinsing, and drying trays
• Cleaning tables and chairs and sweeping the floors

Yes! For the AM shift, the maximum group size is 5. For the PM shift, the maximum group size is 15, unless the volunteer coordinator is short-staffed and makes the decision to allow a larger group. For the afternoon shift, all volunteers in the group must be at least 14 years old. Groups of teenagers under 17 MUST be accompanied by 1 adult for every 5 teens.

Group leaders should be prepared with contact information for each person in their group on the day of service. Also, group leaders MUST give the volunteer coordinator a number where they can be reached on the day of service so that we can get in touch with you if you are delayed, etc. If you do not have a cell phone, the volunteer coordinator can work out an alternate means of communicating with you on the day of service.

For the AM shift, group leaders should arrive by 8:15am and team members should arrive by 8:30am. For the PM shift, group leaders should arrive by 11:30am and team members should arrive by no later than 11:45am. Even though we don’t start serving until 12:30, there are multiple tasks that need to be accomplished before we serve and we need our entire volunteer crew available to do so.

Please stress to your volunteers the importance of arriving on time and staying for the whole shift!