More people served at St. Vincent de Paul Society dining hall

YOUNGSTOWN — Imagine serving 300 people lunch one day.

And doing it again the next day.

And again the next.

Feeding all of those people may eventually become a burden, though it is one embraced by the St. Vincent de Paul Society dining hall on Front Street.

“It puts a burden on us,” said Skip Barone, manager of the dining hall. “But we welcome the burden; we welcome the challenge. But it becomes very costly.”

“We have a crisis on our hands,” said Rebecca Martinez, director of resource development for Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley.

The food bank supplies food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties with thousands of pounds of food.

“The people that are showing up now are the working poor. Some of them are the ones who used to be donating,” Martinez added.

The hall has seen an increase in the number of people coming for free lunches over the past few months, Barone said. The hall served more than 6,000 people in July, which was a record, Barone said. Last month, the hall served 6,961 people.

For the complete story, see Wednesday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com.