Two of SecondBite’s Brisbane agencies who work in tandem for food collection and meal preparation have not let the recent floods in South East Queensland hamper their efforts to provide meals to people in need.  

The team from Community Canteen collects 15 boxes of vegetables and up to 50kg of meat from the SecondBite warehouse each fortnight, bringing it back to the Communify commercial kitchen for volunteers to prepare a range of nutritious meals under the guidance of professional chef and Community Canteen volunteer menu planner Zac McClelland.

The organisation has been operating for 20 years and manages a group of more than 200 volunteers who assist with weekly meal preparations on a roster basis.

Depending on the produce on any given week, Zac makes sure every ounce of donated food is put to good use. Some weeks he will oversee the cooking of tasty roast pork with honey and poppy seed vegetables, and other weeks it may be garam masala BBQ chicken with tomatoes and roasted sweet potatoes.

“Each fortnight up to 600 top quality meals are prepared, frozen and returned to SecondBite for delivery to domestic violence shelters. This ensures that fridges are stocked with nutritious meals for people arriving at any time of the day or night. A proportion of the meals are also sent to people who are homeless and doing it touch.”

Zac McClelland, Community Canteen Volunteer and Professional Chef

Communify also provides the Community Canteen program with funds for additional food purchases to supplement food donated by SecondBite.  

Due to the recent flooding events across Brisbane, the Communify commercial kitchen was unavailable for the regular meal preparation, so once again Zac stepped up and offered the use of his own commercial kitchen to the team.

Community Canteen Director Kristyna Dillon says the volunteers would not have been able to work if an alternative venue hadn’t been found.

“With floods affecting our ability to work in our regular kitchen, we didn’t know if we would be able to provide our regular 600 meals. If it wasn’t for Zac’s generosity, we would have had to decline the food from SecondBite, and so many people in Brisbane would be left without meals this week. Given the current difficult circumstances we’re all living with, that would have been an even bigger blow to them.”

Kristyna Dillon, Community Canteen Director

For the team at SecondBite, this is just one of many stories of volunteers and community groups banding together to make a difference in dire circumstances.  

More information on SecondBite’s support of Community Canteen can be seen at https://communitycanteen.com.au/partners/

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