Feeding Our Friends

Oak on Main, an Italian restaurant located in downtown Pullman, puts on a program once a week called Feeing Our Friends. This program allows anyone to come up and grab a free meal. Since the start of the pandemic, owner Tracy and her husband put together homemade meals every Tuesday. They prep and serve around 125 to 150 meals for families and people around the Palouse. They have their restaurant employees and volunteers come in and help package up individual meals while also accepting donations to help keep the program funded.

“We have thought about bringing in staff on Mondays to help because it has become a lot to prep and get ready every week but were kind of waiting on the whole COVID thing to tap out a little bit but were not going stop,” said the owner.

Tracy and her husband wanted to make people feel conformable when grabbing a free meal. Every week they see all types of people and have ‘regulars’ who can’t tell them enough of how happy this program makes them.

“I would say young families, middle families, I would say college students, all the way to elderly couples that would come in and grab food, I mean they say that ‘thank you so much this is so great every Tuesday we don’t have to worry about where were getting our food,” said Tracy.

They plan to continue to the Feeding our Friends program so people who are food insecure know where their next meal is coming from.