The Helping Harvest Community Kitchen has distributed more than 100,000 meals since its April opening.
The kitchen in the GoggleWorks II building at 229 Washington St. provides a variety of meals for residents of Berks and Schuylkill counties experiencing food insecurity and is primarily focused on specific populations such as seniors, officials said in a release announcing the milestone.
Those meals include frozen heat-and-eat ready meals and bulk ingredients repackaged into family-friendly portions, both distributed through Helping Harvest’s network of agency partners and programs such as Mobile Markets, as well as hot congregate meals served by the agency’s shelter and soup kitchen partners, officials said.
“This (Community Kitchen) project has surpassed my wildest dreams,” said Jay Worrall, Helping Harvest president. “When we moved in last April, our goal was to produce 2,500 meals per week by the end of our first year of operation. We are now 11 months in, and we’ve had single volunteer shifts of just a couple hours come close to hitting that number. It’s amazing.”
The Helping Harvest Community Kitchen relies on volunteers to package meals for distribution. From left, Angela Berkis of Sinking Spring, Stephanie Gentile of Mohnton and Pollyanne Bonning of Hamburg, all volunteers from FirstEnergy/Met-Ed, prepare Thanksgiving meals in November. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
A volunteer shift largely of Penske employees in February broke the single shift record for number of meals packaged — 2,225 meals in 2 1/2 hours.
“We believe that everyone deserves access to tasty and nutritious food, and that belief is behind every menu planning decision we make in the kitchen,” said Chef Melanie Galarza, director of culinary operations at the kitchen. “We also have a lot of fun and enjoy what we do, and I think that’s a big part of why volunteers like spending time with us. They feel like they are doing good for their community and having fun at the same time. The result is that we’re able to get a lot accomplished with the help of volunteers.”
In 2025, the Community Kitchen distributed about 90,000 meals, including over 14,000 heat-and-eat ready Thanksgiving meals.
Helping Harvest delivers food to over 350 partners in its service area. In 2025, it distributed over $21.8 million in food to those in need.
The kitchen will celebrate its one-year anniversary in mid-April.