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2010 — present
The largest kitchen in Fort Wayne is a school district's: The deep history of Fort Wayne's school lunchrooms was not reached's standard; the documented modern record is one of scale. Fort Wayne Community Schools stated in 2010 that its Nutrition Services served more than 4.5 million meals a year, with 68 percent of students participating in the free and reduced-price program — 17,856 students on free lunch and 3,235 on reduced in the prior year. The district's 2012 board record shows the machinery: a Nutrition Process Center and ten cooking kitchens, supplied by a food bid of 608 items and some $3.5 million. Under the federal Community Eligibility Provision the district moved to breakfast and lunch at no cost to every student. When school is out the kitchen follows the children: in the summer of 2019 the district served nearly 50,000 lunches, more than 35,000 snacks and almost 2,000 breakfasts at parks-department and library and YMCA sites, with a mobile meal truck working three city parks. The need underneath the numbers was measured the same decade: the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation and Purdue Fort Wayne's 2018 Vulnerable Populations Study counted more than 51,000 food-insecure Allen County residents in 2015 — 14.3 percent of the county. The charity food record — the food bank and the pantries — is the Charities section's; the markets and groceries that stock the city's home tables are the Farms and Business sections'.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Community Schools statements (2010) and board proceedings (11 June 2012) — the 4.5-million-meal scale, the participation figures, the Nutrition Process Center and ten cooking kitchens, the 608-item food bid.
- Fort Wayne Magazine / FortWayne.com, "Horn of Unplenty" — the Community Eligibility Provision in FWCS, the summer 2019 meal counts and sites, the mobile meal truck.
- St. Joseph Community Health Foundation and Purdue University Fort Wayne, 2018 Vulnerable Populations Study — the 51,000 food-insecure residents of 2015.
- Charities; Farms & Crops; Businesses — the food bank, the markets and the groceries, cross-referenced and not retold here.