Alaska soup kitchen gets large food donation after crash

An official at an Anchorage soup kitchen said she received as a donation of at least 30,000 pounds of food on Christmas Eve from a local towing company after a truck carrying the produce crashed.

Bean's Cafe and Children's Lunchbox CEO Lisa Sauder said the towing company offered her the food after they recovered it from a semi-truck that crashed into a ditch. No one was injured in the crash. The companies that were scheduled to receive the food decided that they could no longer sell the groceries, KTUU-TV reported.

“We were just about out of fresh produce,” Sauder said. “This time of year, fresh produce gets harder and harder for us to get and so to be given this gift of produce that we can be given right away for meals; it’s gonna help so many people.

"It really is kind of a little bit of a Christmas miracle.”

Sauder said the donation from Vulcan Towing came at a time when demand at the soup kitchen has never been higher because of hardships from the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are daily hearing from people who have never been in this position of not knowing how they’re going to feed their kids or where they’re going to sleep tonight,” Sauder said.

The shipment included chicken, eggs, vegetables, hamburgers, strawberries and a variety of other produce. The soup kitchen's Food Service Director Scott Lingle said the package could serve those in need for up to three weeks. Bean's Cafe feeds around 700 to 800 people a day.

ASSOCIATED PRESS