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Bread & Broth grateful for local food donors (Opinion)

Beth Wallace / Guest column

Since 1989, Bread & Broth has fed the food insecure in the Lake Tahoe South Shore community. Currently, Bread & Broth serves a hot and nutritious, full-course Monday Meal at St. Theresa’s Grace Hall and provides seconds and food “giveaway” bags containing groceries for the week. In addition, Bread & Broth provides a soup and simple entree through the Second Serving program at the Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church each Friday. Also, approximately 160 children in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District receive food bags each Friday to supplement nutritional needs over the weekend. 

Bread & Broth receives many individual, service organization, and business donations in addition to grants to support these programs. However, these B&B services are also supported by the generous grocery stores, businesses, and restaurants in South Lake Tahoe who have donated food, beverages, snacks, and soups to their programs throughout the past year.

Safeway, Raley’s at the Y, Whole Foods and McDonald’s donate food twice a week to the B&B Monday Meal program and Second Serving. B&B volunteers arrive at these businesses on both Mondays and Fridays to pick up donated food — meat, pizza, pastries, salads, cakes, bread and dessert. Volunteers pick up donated food from Sugar Pine Bakery, Yellow Sub, Smart & Final and Pizza Hut once a week. In addition, Crazy Good Bakery & Cafe provides bagels and other baked pastries on many Mondays for both the volunteers and the dinner guests.



Second Serving receives the generous donation of soup each Friday from various restaurants throughout South Lake Tahoe. Restaurants participating over the past year include Bally’s, Cafe Fiore, California Burger Company, Coldwater Brewery, Freshies, MacDuffs, Primos, Riva Grill, South of North Brewing Company, Ten Crows, Artemis, and Yellow Sub. A special treat for Second Serving was a lasagna dinner provided by Ivano’s in November complete with a friend of the owner playing the accordion, delighting the dinner guests.

The B&B 4 Kids program receives donations from local businesses and community groups as well.  Several groups have supported food drives — the South Tahoe Police Department is currently collecting food and the S-Club at South Tahoe High School is currently conducting a food drive. Grocery Outlet generously provides their parking lot twice a year to allow Bread & Broth 4 Kids to conduct its Cram-A-Cruiser events to collect food donations from the community. For the B&B 4 Kids Summer Program, Crystal Dairy will be donating ice cream cups for the children next summer when they come to pick up food to take home.



Other stores and businesses are generous to Bread & Broth when closing temporarily or for the season. Lake Tahoe Resort and Echo Restaurant donated everything in their freezers and refrigerators when remodeling their kitchen. Other large food donations came from Chart House and Ace High Smokehouse. Fallen Leaf Marina Store and Restaurant, Heavenly Mountain Resort, Sierra at Tahoe, and Kirkwood Mountain Resort all donated food and snacks when closing for the season.

Bread & Broth is grateful for these very generous donations from our local businesses and stores. These donations continue to help support B&B’s mission to feed those facing food insecurity in our local community. 

As Roberta Strachan, Food Coordinator for Bread & Broth shares, “Without these wonderful stores and restaurants, we would never be able to feed so many families in South Lake Tahoe with such delicious meals. Thank God for this fantastic giving community.”

For more information on how you and your business can partner with Bread & Broth, visit their website at breadandbroth.org

Beth Wallace is communications co-chairperson for Bread & Broth.


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