Inside a York Volunteer Kitchen Serving Hot Dinners

We spend an evening with Kitchens For Everyone York to understand how a volunteer-run kitchen serves hot meals with dignity for people who are homeless or in vulnerable situations. We hear how outreach, teamwork, and small acts of welcome create purpose for volunteers and real connection for guests. 
• why extra time in retirement can feel unsettling, and why volunteering fills the gap 
• what Kitchens For Everyone York does, from sit-down meals to street outreach 
• how the charity started, how it is funded, and why donations stretch further without paid staff 
• how a Wednesday service runs, from orders and hot drinks to food served at tables 
• volunteer roles that do not require cooking skills, from prep to tea and coffee 
• what outreach looks like, including safety, pairs, routes, and checking on regulars 
• what volunteers say they get back, from purpose and gratitude to new friendships across ages 
do check out your local food kitchen and see if you can go and give them a hand. 
Please don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe. 

Also if you would like too find our more about the "Food Kitchen" please click on the following link https://kitchenforeveryoneyork.org/

Transcript

Retirement Time And New Purpose

Derm Tanner 0:00

Hello, thanks for listening to the Grey Matters podcast. If you're retired or coming up to that big change in your life, chances are no one has ever warned you about all the added time you now have on your hands. No financial expert can help you with that. We spent months travelling around talking to charities, companies, and sports clubs, and it turns out you're needed and valued by them. Keep listening because we might just have a few suggestions for you. I'm Derm Tanner

Roy Player 0:26

and I'm Roy Player.

Food Provision In York

Derm Tanner 0:28

And in this episode, it's all about food provision. Kitchens for Everyone in York provides hot meals twice a week for the homeless and for those in vulnerable situations, as well as outreach twice a week around the streets of the city.

Roy Player 0:41

Yeah, I went along and sort of joined them for an evening to see basically whether you had to be a cordon bleu chef or something to go along and join out and help out. And in fact, no, it was basically, you know, even if you're good at cutting up the carrots and potatoes and just helping out. And it was great that there was a a whole age range as well of people involved. There was a terrific lass from who was a student and she was helping out through two people like us who were are retired and had time on their hands. And it was anything that you could do really to to make it comfortable for people as you can imagine, having to come in off the street and come in and take a meal. And you think, oh, is it gonna be bland food? Is it gonna but no, it was fantastic, it was great. People had donated food and obviously things are relatively simple in their preparation, but it was terrific. And I had great respect for them, great respect for what they were doing, but the most important thing was there was an there's just this great lady called Jules, who was the volunteer manager for that night, and she led the team and provided meal for around about 25 homeless people.

How The Charity Works Day To Day

Jools Rebbeck 1:52

I'm Jools Rebbeck and I am the chair and trustee of Kitchen for Everyone York, and then I'm also a team leader of a Wednesday team and a Sunday morning team, and I've volunteered for eight years now.

Roy Player 2:09

Maybe if you don't mind, just explain precisely what the charity does.

Jools Rebbeck 2:13

Yeah, we well we started not as a charity but just as a community group a whole ten years ago now. We've been a charity for full five years, and key was set up by a local reverend who came to York, saw that there was an issue with homelessness on the street, wanted to help, didn't really know what to do, ended up finding CareCentre, which is the building we're in now. And the lady that ran CareCentre at the time explained to him that if he wanted to do something, he could sort something for a Sunday because they were open Monday to Saturday and there was no Sunday provision. We've never had any paid members of staff, but we also have to pay for services at times, we have to pay rent on the buildings that we use, but other than that, that's our main outgoing in the year. We get masses and masses of food donated, we get a lot of other things donated. If we put a call out on our social media for particular things that we've needed, we always get inundated with it. We're really, really well supported. So, very luckily our bank balance seems to stay pretty level all the time with our outgoings and our incomings, which is fantastic over this number of years, and it because we don't have any of those big costs going out on salaries, that makes a huge difference. And I think it makes a difference to people donating to us because they know the money's just going straight in to the work. It's at no point can it go anywhere else, really.

Roy Player 3:33

So we're in a room at the moment which is which is empty, and you can tell by quite echoey at the moment. What's what's going to happen over the next hour and a half? How will this change?

Jools Rebbeck 3:42

Yeah, so on a Wednesday evening we just do a cook two course dinner with hot drinks. So the guys just come in, they place an order at the counter, somebody gets them a hot drink, they have a sit-down, other volunteers then plate it up and it all gets delivered to the table. We make a point of it not being a kind of counter service and it being served to people at the table, because that's one of the things we notice that the guys don't tend to get. Obviously, you might get given stuff if you're sitting in a doorway, you might get a takeaway, but again, actually sitting down with your knife and fork and having food delivered to your table is just a simple thing that we probably take for granted and they appreciate. So it will be a two-course dinner for about 40 every Wednesday evening. So we've got six teams of volunteers that run our Wednesdays on rotation, so we only ask volunteers to do once every six weeks. Quite a lot of our volunteers will join multiple teams, so they might do a Sunday and a Wednesday, and in which case they're doing two a month or something like that, and then our outreach services are the same, we've got they run on a four-week rotation, so there's four teams of each outreach. So we're never asking anybody to overcommit because we're aware that everybody's doing it in their spare time, and consequently, we've usually got about 100 volunteers on our books. So, one of our biggest jobs for our lovely trustee, Sarah, is organizing our teams all the time, and obviously people move on. We get students that come and do it all the way through uni and they obviously leave or they go home for the summer or whatever, and we've got to keep back filling. So it's quite a lot of logistics involved, definitely.

Roy Player 5:14

Unlike the food bank, this is for a homeless person on the street that comes to uni.

Jools Rebbeck 5:20

We're not we're not prescribed in that at all. A lot of our guys have some kind of accommodation, whether it's hostile or temporary or tents or doorways. It can be anything, and we don't obviously ask people when they arrive, you can't have any tea unless you're homeless. It's t obviously totally not like that, it's absolutely open to everyone.

Roy Player 5:42

And so how did you get involved? I mean, you are a volunteer yourself, you you work, you have a family as well. So how on earth did you get involved with this?

Jools Rebbeck 5:53

Actually, the family family thing was how I got involved. Actually, my eldest daughter was looking for volunteering for Duke of Edinburgh. I then got offered a team, basically, to manage. So I started with a Sunday morning team.

Roy Player 6:06

What here though do you have to do, you and your, your team have to do to make this a successful evening for the people that come here?

Jools Rebbeck 6:14

Well, lit literally from scratch, so the team leader is responsible for coming up with a menu and getting supplies for it. So we've got a store and we get a certain amount of dried canned kind of goods that are donated regularly, but the rest of it is things that we have to come up with a menu and make it ourselves. So each of our team leaders comes up with a menu and they they get the food, obviously then recompensed by the charity for whatever they've had to buy.

Roy Player 6:40

So do you have to be a sort of Jamie Oliver type of cook?

Jools Rebbeck 6:43

No, no, you have to you have to remember that most of our guys don't like anything overly spicy, anything too weird. They like kind of good, honest, hearty kind of pub food, I suppose I think of it as, you know, like stews and you know, pastas, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, and in the winter, like at this time of year, we get brilliant donations from Abundance York, basically go and collect fruit and veg from around the city from people's fruit trees and things, and obviously there can be a massive glut at certain times of year. And so they donate into us. So, you know, the last few times I've been on, I'd be doing huge apple crumbles with all the donated apples.

Roy Player 7:22

But I would imagine this is a a project that covers the country. And if people were interested in getting involved, what sort of what sort of people come along to you and and what do you get from the volunteers?

Jools Rebbeck 7:35

Yeah, I mean there are organizations just like ours in most cities, absolutely. But we get volunteers from every walk of life, through from our students, through to our retired people, and kind of everything in between, really. We've got quite a lot of like family relationships, husbands and wives, mums and daughters, that kind of thing.

Roy Player 7:55

And if people do come to you, I mean if it if they're not keen on perhaps helping in the kitchen, are there other areas? You talk about the outreach program and and I presume things like social media and and making people aware that you actually exist

Outreach And The Human Side

Jools Rebbeck 8:07

Plenty of roles to be to be done and equally, if you if you're not really into cooking, you could just be on the tea and coffee, you could be literally taking plates out to people. You don't necessarily need to be, you know, back of house properly chopping and mixing and whatever. And and we do always have a mixture of people, you know, that like one thing or the other. So that's always been the case. Outreach is quite different. You're not actually cooking there, and you may be a little bit more close and personal with people because we're out on the streets and we're talking to maybe ones and twos, whereas this is obviously a big room of people, you don't necessarily get as much time to kind of chat with people in here. It can just be a bit busy and it and it's quite fast moving. You know, once we're serving, it's like straight on through, and then people gradually trickling out, and then we're clearing down, and then it's all done. You know, it's very fast. Where outreach can feel a bit steadier, you've got maybe got a bit of time to stop and chat.

Roy Player 8:59

I would imagine that thing about actually communication and talking to people is is a huge aspect of a volunteer's role, in as much as I would imagine that some people with a come in would like the company tend to be taught talk talk about everyday things, and other people will actually just want to just sit and eat and go. And and that must be the same when you're out and about in the city as well. So that must be sort of something that as an individual you need to be able to judge who wants to talk and who doesn't want to talk.

Jools Rebbeck 9:29

Yeah, absolutely. I mean obviously when you're out in the out in the streets, it can be a little bit clearer. We obviously come across people in all sorts of states of upset sometimes on, on our evening sessions. That that can be quite, quite harrowing. But again we're always in like a double pair effectively, so if some if we do need to pause, everybody's got a bit of flex, you know, for somebody to do that and somebody else to carry on serving, and again it's could because they're regular teams that they get to know the people. Like I guess the people that we see in doorways tend to be the same and they tend to be based in the same areas. So we've got a set route that we do around the city, and they kind of know we're coming and we know where they'll be, and we'll look out for people. Equally the other organisations in the city might say, Oh, you know, watch out for somebody, we're a bit worried about this person, you know. Can you check them when you're out on your route? So that's nice that there's a bit of kind of handover between the different organisations too.

Roy Player 10:29

Again, that seems a tremendous responsibility because presumably if someone comes in on a regular basis and then they don't come in, you kind of feel anxious towards their, their well-being. Do you get involved with that side of things as well as a volunteer?

Jools Rebbeck 10:42

Yeah, I think you know, obviously different volunteers end up making kind of connections with different people. So it might be that there's somebody that you see really regularly yourself. I've certainly got people who come near where I work a lot and therefore I see them a lot during the week and then I see them in service. So those kind of people I would kind of watch out for and think and notice if I didn't see them and you know, notice something was going on. But the other organizations will all usually have some idea of what's what's gone on.

Roy Player 11:11

What do you hope if people do come along as volunteers? What do you hope they get out of it as well being part of this great team.

Jools Rebbeck 11:19

Well, I always end up talking to people about that because I think there's a general feeling that you're being quite kind of righteous and whatever by volunteering. I think people forget how much you get from it. I felt when I first started volunteering, I had like mid-teen and a and a younger child, and life was fairly hexic, and there's not a lot of gratefulness for mothers of children at that age, and so I would come in here different now, I put a host too hard. But I would come in here and make a lovely dinner, and, and you would just get a stream of thank you so much, that was absolutely lovely, and also it's a really complete job. So you come in and there's nothing here, you make, cook, serve, clean up an entire dinner, and it's like a whole thing clean down off and it's also quite a nice feeling of achievement. You know, everybody's jobs you it's like you'd never quite end anything, do you, when you've got a full-time job. There's always like something else you could be doing. So where this is quite complete, it's always nice to feel that you're making a bit of a difference.

A Midwinter Shift With Volunteers

Roy Player 12:25

I recorded the first part of this podcast, probably back end of back end of summer. The weather was good, the evenings were long, and it was lovely walking down here in this beautiful location here in, in York, where the food kitchen is. And I thought it was kind of almost like it was walking through the city and everything, and it was it was so lovely, and the people that were here were so amazing, the volunteers, and they were here helping out, and they are all volunteers, and I and I just thought, well, I'm gonna come back actually when it kind of gets a wee bit cooler. It's kind of now midwinter, it's pitch dark, it's it's coming up to sort of quarter past six, and the gates will be open soon for people to come in and start getting their food, and and and it's cold. I'm stood outside here near them, and I'm gonna be joining them soon to queue up to go in, and it's cold, and it's not quite as romantic perhaps as it was when I was here a few weeks ago.

Dilwyn Jones 13:29

My name is Dilwyn Jones.

Roy Player 13:30

Now things are starting to go on behind us here at the kitchen. Potatoes are coming out of the bag, a couple of other people have joined us, but you've just started here as well, haven't you? This is my third night. Fantastic. So, what has made you come here to help us?

Dilwyn Jones 13:44

I had a lot of time in my hands, too much time in my hands. I wanted to do something, and this was one of the activities I thought might benefit me and it might might benefit the community.

Roy Player 13:55

What exactly do you do here?

Dilwyn Jones 13:57

Whatever it needs to do. Yeah, just chip chip, chip in, yeah, it's a good one. No, it's just anything. Take orders, serving food, clear the tables, and doing the washing up.

Roy Player 14:13

A rewarding thing then to do that you're not sort of sat at home watching TV on the couch?

Dilwyn Jones 14:18

Yeah, I think I'm giving something back to the community and yeah, and it helps me as well. It gives me purpose.

Roy Player 14:26

Can I just talk to you while you're doing that? what's your name, Mike?

Brian Sharp 14:29

Brian Sharp.

Roy Player 14:30

Now, Brian, what are you up to at the moment? What's what's the process? You've got people coming in around about 55 minutes time.

Brian Sharp 14:35

Yes.

Roy Player 14:36

How many people are coming in and what are you having to do?

Brian Sharp 14:38

Well, we never know how many are coming in, but we prepare for probably about 30 people, but it could be more. Sometimes it's fewer. We don't know.

Roy Player 14:48

What has brought you here to to volunteer? Have you stopped work or are you doing this as a part-time, as sort of around your normal job?

Brian Sharp 14:57

Well, I am working part-time now, but I started doing this when I was working full-time. And really, it's something you can fit in with with working, you know, you don't have to make a big commitment. So I, I volunteer one Wednesday in six and one Sunday in six, which isn't a big thing out of anybody's time, really,

Roy Player 15:15

and what made you decide to do this particular thing?

Brian Sharp 15:20

Well I think I kind of looked around and thought somebody ought to be doing that, and and why isn't that me? I didn't have any great sort of personal desire to do it. I just thought somebody should be doing that.

Roy Player 15:33

I can and I can do it. Okay, I was talking to Jaws a little bit earlier on, and we're talking about it's not just peeling the potatoes, putting the plates out and serving food. It's it's obviously that thing as well about human content.

Brian Sharp 15:45

Yeah, there's an interaction, interaction with the body.

Roy Player 15:47

And that must be really important. It must be very rewarding both sides, I would imagine.

Brian Sharp 15:51

It is, yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, you see, you see regulars and you know, you you speak to them, chat to them. Yeah, I mean, the thing is it's all quite it's quite low key, it's very it's very friendly, very chatty. Yeah, it's, it's nice. And and also with the team that you work with as well, because it's the same people you're working with quite regularly.

Roy Player 16:13

And I was gonna say, I think that's something as well that we've discovered talking to a lot of volunteers, is that it's very easy, especially when you've got slightly older and sort of it's very easy that all those work friends that you've made, acquaintances, because they carry on working, yeah, you start to lose touch with all these people. Yeah. And it's that thing of trying to create a a new routine for yourself, but also to interact with people older and younger, because it's important, I think.

Brian Sharp 16:40

Yeah, yeah. I totally agree, yeah.

Roy Player 16:42

Can I interrupt you for a moment just while you're sorry, and and your name is

Tasha 16:46

Tasha. Tasha, yeah.

Roy Player 16:48

And Tasha, cutting up potatoes looks, looks great, and hard at work here with Jules, and Jules is talking about the importance of the volunteers, the rest of the team here, and it's lovely because you're actually you're quite you're quite young compared to myself and a few of the others.

Tasha 17:07

To be honest, it's absolutely wonderful being one of the younger ones because I work in hospitality full-time anyway, so feeding people and giving people drinks is literally part of the entire job. So it's nice doing it a bit pro bono, to be honest.

Roy Player 17:20

And how did you get involved with this then?

Tasha 17:22

So one of my friends is actually on the outreach team, so they go around on a Monday and they give out supplies and like consumables or toiletries or underwear to people, and she knows that I work in a kitchen like professionally, so she's like you need to get involved with the wheat with the Wednesday crew because you'll really enjoy it, and I have really to be honest. Honestly, one of my favourite things about it is the massive age ranges and stuff. Like, even though Jules is covering for Hillary at the moment, Hillary's honestly one of my favourite people I've met here, and she's wonderful. She's been in like catering for 20 years, she has her own cookbook and stuff, and I'm learning something new from it every single time I come. It's wonderful. It's just nice talking to people from different age ranges because hospitality, I think, is very stereotypically a young man's game. So you get kind of a similar age workforce every time. It's just like seeing people's faces when they get fed is wonderful, and you know, it's they appreciate it, they just like the safe space to be able to sit down and actually have a comfortable meal, and I think that's fantastic. And you know, it's not just people who are without shelter, it's just people who are vulnerable too, and the conversation that a lot of people offer them, I think it's just a friendly face at the end of the day that a lot of people need. So we're social creatures, aren't we?

How To Help And Final Thoughts

Roy Player 18:34

And so that's it. another Wednesday evening session finished. Twenty people fed tonight. Some of them have got rooms for the night, but the amazing thing is that like Jules and the team there they know everyone and make sure everyone's okay, which is just brilliant, and some of them go back out onto the street with a little bit of food in their bag and go and find some shelter and luckily it's not raining tonight, so it's it's not quite so bad. But if you fancy doing something like this, do check out your local food kitchen and see if you can go and give them a hand. It's probably just a couple of hours, maybe once every six weeks.

Derm Tanner 19:13

If you've been listening to that and it stirs something within you, then I thoroughly recommend that you go to the website Kitchens for Everyone York. I'm on it right now, and there's all sorts of things here. What we do, how to help, you can donate, fundraise, support, there's where to get help, they can contact. So everything you need is on that website if you want to get some more details.

Roy Player 19:35

And these organisations is across the country again, although we went to the one in, in York and the Central Methodist Church in York, again, across the country and I think if you have any doubt, it it was going in there and seeing the connection between the people who were volunteering and the gratitude from those who were receiving the food, and they were sat around a table and people were chatting and again, it wasn't just the food, it was the connection with people who were willing to listen and willing to chat and to build up a relationship. Because I talked to Jules, that volunteer manager of the night, and she was sort of saying that you know, if someone doesn't come in then they can go and check and make sure that they're okay. They will go out and see and make sure they're okay if they're still on the streets or whatever. Or hopefully it's a positive story and, and someone has found somewhere or is happy and, and has moved on and you know, so it's more than just the food that they provide as a service. But that key thing, as we all know, is having a having a belly full is it makes a huge difference, and to have people that are going out of their way to help that happen is is fantastic, and all credit to Jules and that extraordinary team at Kitchen to Everyone.

Derm Tanner 20:55

You've been listening to Grey Matters More, produced and presented by Roy Player and Derm Tanner. Please don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe. That way you'll never miss an episode.