Vineland Soup Kitchen gets Nourishing Neighbors grant to fight hunger

Vineland Soup Kitchen picked up a Nourishing Neighbors grant at a moment when food lines in Cumberland County remain stubbornly long and grocery budgets are still stretched by inflation, rent and utility pressure. The city’s only free soup kitchen says it is already serving 150 or more meals a day, a pace that shows how quickly a modest grant can be absorbed by demand.

The need is not abstract. The New Jersey Office of the Food Security Advocate says Cumberland County has the highest food insecurity rate in the state at 13.1 percent. A Feeding America study cited by the kitchen found nearly 1 million New Jersey residents were food insecure in 2024, a 22 percent jump from the year before. In that setting, the Vineland operation is less a ceremonial nonprofit than a core part of the local safety net.

Spirit & Truth Ministries says it has run the feeding program for more than 40 years and remains the only free soup kitchen in Vineland. It is based in the basement of First United Methodist Church at 700 E. Landis Ave., at 7th and Landis Avenues, and serves breakfast from 8 to 9 a.m. and lunch from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.

The organization says the pressure is constant. It ended 2024 with 58,297 meals served, averaging 4,858 meals a month, a total that works out to about 160 meals a day. That means the kitchen is already operating at a scale where even a successful grant is more likely to keep pace with demand than eliminate it.

Beyond hot meals, the kitchen also hands out bagged lunches on Fridays with food for the weekend. It provides personal care items, coats and clothing during winter months, and mobile shower services from April through October. Those extra services matter for people dealing with homelessness, unstable housing, job loss, medical bills or other sudden setbacks that often push a household from coping to crisis.

The presentation included Katelyn Emick, communications coordinator for Albertsons Mid-Atlantic Division, along with Lori King, Dana Catalana, Chelsea Consalo, Raquel Soto and Mattew Milam. Albertsons Companies said its Nourishing Neighbors effort has operated since 2014, has delivered more than 1.3 billion meals and contributed over $330 million to fight hunger, with customer donations at stores helping fund local hunger-relief programs.

For Vineland, the grant will not solve food insecurity. It will help keep meals moving, weekends covered and one of Cumberland County’s most important emergency food providers open to residents who have nowhere else to turn.