Helpful Tips for Feeding a Small Disaster Relief Group

feeding disaster volunteers

When there’s a disaster, a disaster aid group often sends a kitchen crew out to feed massive amounts of people left without power, food, and a way to fix anything to eat. These people work under someone trained for emergencies and have helped on these events multiple times. They work with local and national agencies to feed thousands daily. They’ll feed people displaced by the disaster, staff people, and volunteers helping with cleanup efforts. But what about feeding disaster relief volunteers in smaller emergencies?

Limited groups of volunteers help in more localized events and only need a small-scale kitchen unit. When a flood hits a small town, or a tornado touches down in a narrow area, a smaller feeding unit is handy. The traumatized area will not need a huge number of volunteers or a full kitchen crew. Sometimes other circumstances arise where a smaller kitchen crew works alongside the larger kitchen crew.

What are the benifits of a small kitchen?

During one disaster, a hurricane had occurred, and the power was out. The local grocery store had large amounts of meat and frozen items that were going to go bad without electricity. They donated it to a church where a large-scale disaster relief effort was happening. The location had large freezers, refrigerators, and generators. The location had a chainsaw group, mud-out crew, shower unit, the National Guard, another relief group, and a full mass feeding unit on location. The mass feeding unit couldn’t use the food because of legal issues. We implemented a small feeding unit, and the food went unwasted by feeding dozens of volunteers.

Sometimes, smaller units do mud-out and assessments. During these call-outs, only a few dozen people help people in smaller areas. These don’t require a full mass kitchen unit, but the volunteers will still need food. If you know how to cook, maybe you can help.

Feeding disaster relief volunteers

Smaller feeding units require different tactics than large ones. Knowing ahead of time what you will do can make your job much easier. When you arrive and find you are the cook, you can still be ready if you are prepared. Flexibility is handy in any disaster situation. It is no different in the kitchen.

When working in a small-scale kitchen feeding unit, you may be the only cook or there might be another volunteer or two. One person should be in charge, though everyone should listen to each other.

If you are in charge, you will need a menu. Sometimes you will use food provided and other times they will expect you to come up with everything. There’s that flexibility again!

Items to Bring

Prepare in advance if you plan to work in a small-scale kitchen. Make your own cookbook with simple-to-fix meals to take with you. It helps to have these meals set to fix in different amounts. Calculate the recipes for a dozen, two dozen, and three dozen people, so you aren’t doing math while trying to do multiple other things.

Be prepared with ten days to two weeks of recipes for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Good dessert and snack recipes will make you well-loved. Simple, filling, home-style recipes will work better than gourmet meals. Try out the recipes ahead with your family and friends to make sure they taste good and appeal to most of them. 

Prepare a tote with things your recipes use that might not be available on site. Your workspace could be a church kitchen, or some place similar, that is not set up for regular use. Bring along the spices, salt, and pepper you will need. Bring along parchment paper (it makes cleanup so much easier), a hand can opener, your favorite enormous cooking pot, cookie sheets, baking dish, and frying pan. Don’t forget to add your cookbook to the tote!

You’ll need to bring these items along with your other disaster relief items if you’ll be doing this job on top of another job, like mud-out. Find more information on what to expect, and what to bring in this article: Preparing for your first mudout.

Now What?

When you arrive at the scene, assess your surroundings and figure out how you’ll do your work. Speak with the head disaster relief person, but don’t take up too much of their time. They will have way more fish to fry than you, even if they aren’t on the stove. Find out what they expect for meals, when meals will be, and the approximate number you will be feeding. There could be a budget they expect you to stick with.

From there, round out a semi-final menu, check out what is available to you in the kitchen, and do some shopping to prepare. Once that’s done, set up your kitchen and get cooking!

20 Helpful Hints for feeding disaster relief volunteers

  1. Expect the unexpected.
  2. During any disaster, other people will want to help! You never know what people will bring you to help you out. Your plans might change if you’ve got crates of apples to use or tons of ham to fix. You’ll fix omelets and scrambled eggs instead of the pancakes or biscuits and gravy you had planned if you have dozens of eggs coming out of your ears. There’s no sense wasting free resources and spending money if you don’t need to. Just tweak your plans a little.
  3. Remember, you are borrowing the kitchen from its normal people. Try to keep in touch with them and be understanding if they need to use the space for a church breakfast, kid’s program, or other event.
  4. If you use items from the kitchen (bags, foil, etc) keep a list so you can restock or reimburse the owners.
  5. Make sure everyone knows what belongs to the church or facility in the fridge. Trust me, you don’t want to get in trouble for drinking the preschooler’s apple juice!
  6. If there are multiple fridges, you might ask to have one or two emptied for your use exclusively. 
  7. You will need numbers for how many you are fixing food for at pretty much every meal, even if you have a general idea of how many to expect.
  8. Knowing how to shop for food and how to adjust a menu will come in handy.
  9. Breakfast is EARLY! You will be up way earlier than almost everybody else getting breakfast ready. Get most of it prepared the night before if you can. It will be to your advantage. You can do things like mixing up casseroles and pre-scrambling eggs the evening before. You can do some setup the night before, too. Thank someone if you get up and find they’ve already started the coffee! In my case, it would be more drinkable than what I can make.
  10. Sandwiches make great lunches when feeding disaster relief volunteers. Crews don’t like to take a lot of time in the middle of the day to eat. They want to get their work done. One of the easiest ways to fix lunch is to set up a separate table for the workers to make their own sandwiches and put together their own lunch after breakfast. Pull out sandwich fixings, snacks, chips, and drinks for them to put in their own paper bags. Have resealable bags, paper sacks, napkins or paper towels, and permanent markers available. They will want to be sure they get their own meal. They can put food in coolers with ice if they plan to eat on-site. If this is the case, they’ll want clean gloves to eat with, as well as wipes and some soap and fresh rinse water if available.
  11. A helpful hint to keep unwanted bystanders out of the kitchen when you are working is to keep the coffee fresh and ready, and snacks available. The teams appreciate fresh fruit and veggies in the afternoon if they come back early and are lounging around.
  12. Often, someone in the community will offer to provide a meal or some snacks. This is okay. Food from a restaurant might show up too. Sometimes, there will be a neighbor that buys out a bakery at the end of every week, so you will have more cakes and donuts than you could imagine!
  13. Ice may be at a premium, so be prepared.
  14. Get to know the people in the community. They have likely been through quite an ordeal and need a friendly face, a sounding board, and a prayer. Be prepared to find them help elsewhere if they need it.
  15. You’re likely to work way more or way less than you expect. Sometimes you will just be fixing a meal at midday for a crew that is working from their homes. Other times, people may stay on site and you will provide all their meals.
  16. Most of the time, you will continue to work after almost everyone else has completed the day.
  17. It’s okay to accept help from other workers if they offer and you want it.
  18. Always try to leave the kitchen better/cleaner than when you got there.
  19. In a disaster, things NEVER go the way you expect, so go with the flow.
  20. When your deployment is complete, you’ll be exhausted for days or even weeks afterwards, no matter what age you are.

The Last Hurrah

Expect the unexpected. Be as prepared as you can. Working in a small-scale kitchen is an exhausting but rewarding position. The people you are feeding will appreciate your work. You CAN do this!

P.S. This article was written by my mom. She’s been a great help with proof reading and editing. She also makes wonderful food and does a fantastic job feeding just about any size crew.

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