Business West of Lake Worth Donates Meat to Needy

By Ivette M. Yee, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Dec. 27–LAKE WORTH — Groups that feed the needy got an extra gift the day after Christmas — meat.

On Wednesday, DJSteaks.com, a business west of Lake Worth, donated $800 worth of steak, hamburger, pork chops and more to three churches that together feed more than 600 people every month.

The donation is the latest effort by the Palm Beach County Community Food Alliance and local businesses to alleviate the area’s hunger problem.

In 2004, the alliance conducted a food security survey that found one in three households with incomes less than or equal to $35,000 ran out of food before they had money to buy more.

"Key lime pie or cherry pie, pastor?" asked Dave Smith, owner of DJSteaks.com as he delivered boxes of frozen meat, and some desserts, to First Baptist Church of Lake Worth.The church provides a hot meal every Thursday to about 300 people, including single parents and the elderly.

Pastor Jack Lenza said the meat donation was valuable.

"One of the biggest problems I have is getting meat," he said. "No one wants to give meat."

DJSteaks.com, which sells and delivers choice cuts of beef, free-range chicken and seafood over the Internet, gave customers the option of donating an item to the needy with their purchase instead of receiving an extra item.

"People were very generous," Smith said. "We decided to do this during Christmas, when people are in the spirit of giving."

The meat will supplement donations from church members at Lakeside United Methodist Church, also in Lake Worth, which provides hot meals in the community the last Saturday of each month.

"We’re thrilled to have this," said Arlie Taylor, an administrative assistant at the church. "This helps us to be able to feed more people because we won’t have to purchase it ourselves. The farther we can stretch our dollars to buy food, the better it is for those who need it."

Taylor said the church started serving meals after Hurricane Frances in 2004 and kept the effort going because of the need.

"We’d like to do it more often, but we don’t have the resources," she said.

This year, soup kitchen and food pantries struggled because of decreased supplies from the local food banks that stock them. Federal aid to food banks has dropped nationwide.

Officials at the Daily Bread, South Florida’s largest food bank, said U.S. Department of Agriculture commodities — surplus food and food the government buys regularly from farmers — once made up 15 percent of its total food supply. Now that’s down to 11 percent.

"You can hardly get anything anymore and we used to get a lot," said Sister Jean Peter Wilders of Servants of The Great I Am, a ministry west of Lake Worth that feeds the homeless six times a month. "We have people knocking on our door sobbing, saying ‘I’ve never needed help before. I don’t know what to do.’"

Ivette M. Yee can be reached at imyee@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6538.

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