The newly renovated and larger dining room inside Lunch Break, part of an expansion that will allow the agency to meet the growing need. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIANÂ DONOHUE
Lunch Break, a community pillar and perhaps Red Bank’s largest social service nonprofit, has been moving into its newly renovated facilities of late. redbankgreen got a sneak peak at the newly expanded facilities the agency says will allow it to fill a skyrocketing need.
Lunch Break Director of Operations Kevin McGee inside the newly renovated lobby of the Red Bank social services nonprofit.(Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
This is not the shoestring soup kitchen Red Bankers have known for forty years.
A modern, comfortable dining room. Sleek classroom space for life skills and English as a second language classes. A warehouse and grocery that has doubled in size so an army of volunteers can dole out food to more people without bumping into one another in crowded hallways.
It’s all part of the new $12 million expansion that has doubled the size of the social services nonprofit started as a soup kitchen by Bank Street resident Norma Todd in 1983. And it’s all very, very much needed, according to Lunch Break staff.
“We’re just going to be able to do so much more to meet the increasing need we see in the community,” said Kevin McGee, Lunch Break Director of Operations. “It really is a transformation.”
McGee said the 12,000 square foot addition and renovation of existing space comes at a critical time, when soaring  housing costs are causing more people to turn to Lunch Break for food, clothing and life skills classes.
“There are a lot of people living in their cars,” he said.
A new second floor room at Lunch Break used for the life skills classes currently enrolling about 160 people. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
Staff and clients have been gradually moving into the new space at 121 Drs. James Parker Boulevard in recent weeks after working out of temporary digs provided by St.Anthony of Padua parish for about a year during construction. The nonprofit’s Life Skills Center had been operating out of a building in Shewsbury for lack of space in Red Bank.
In recent weeks Lunch Break has been serving about 230 meals a day with an additional 150 people taking home food from the grocery. Another fifty come each day to obtain clothing.
An official ribbon cutting for the new facility is planned for the spring.
The new pantry inside Lunch Break is double the size of the old one. (Photos by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
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