Ottawa Mission gets second food truck in time for annual Easter dinner

A time for celebration and hope — that’s what the Ottawa Mission’s CEO Peter Tilley calls the shelter’s annual Easter long weekend celebrations.

And this year, the shelter is celebrating with a new food truck that will help address growing demand in the community.

“We’ve got several thousand pounds of roast turkey, of course, and we’ll have several thousand pounds of roast beef as we always do, some Yorkshire pudding, the trimmings and hopefully some might fine desserts,” Tilley told The Rob Snow Show on Thursday, April 14. “It’s going to be a big feast. We’re going to be serving meals out in the community this weekend through the food truck program, and we’re going to serve 6,000 to 7,000 meals out in the community alone. We’ll have the takeout meals on Easter Monday here, as well as a fine Easter dinner for our in-house residents.”

Easter dinner is scheduled for Monday, April 18.

For now, though, the Mission will continue to serve the community through its food truck service, which has grown in demand since its inception at the start of the pandemic.

And when donors were made aware of just how much the Mission's food truck service was in demand, several donors stepped up and delivered a second food truck to the shelter on Thursday. 

“Jim Foster from Pelican Seafood and Grill donated a food truck that he wasn’t using,” Tilley said when explaining how the food truck service started. “We figured out while we could go out into the poorer communities, we know the incidence of hunger through this pandemic was greater than ever in the poorer pockets. We identified five neighbourhoods, that soon grew within six months to 19 neighbourhoods and became a huge effort of an average of 455 meals a day.”

Since then, the Mission has been at full capacity and continues to have a waiting list.

But now that the Ottawa Mission has a second truck, they’re able to add more stops to its route, Tilley said.

“There’s always the operating costs that go with that, which we hope to maintain — it has to be sustainable, and it will be. Thanks to our donors we’re going to step forward and keep that going and we’ve added — so far — I think, another 12 stops to that route.”

To date, Tilley confirmed that it will amount to 31 stops across the city.

Hopefully by Thanksgiving, Tilley said, the Mission will be able to have its traditional indoor sit-down turkey dinners the shelter is known for.

But the food trucks will continue.

Just $3.47 provides a hot meal at the Ottawa Mission, which the shelter is happy to accept year-round.

Donations can be made on the Ottawa Mission website here.