Ports Pizzeria made enough meals to feed 31 families from Southport to Edgecomb March 23. It received food donations from the recently closed Thistle Inn and Restaurant and Brady’s Restaurant through Boothbay Region Community Resource Council. The families were served through BRCRC’s Food for Thought program.

Ports Pizzeria manager Jeff Teel credited BRCRC Addiction Outreach Coordinator Holly Stover with the idea, but Stover said it was Teel who reached out to her. “He called me and said he ... and Sante wanted to help some families out … I said 'Well, our Food for Thought families need a little help.' Maybe not everybody's home, but the kids definitely are.”

“Food for Thought families get Friday deliveries every week, but we definitely wanted to do something extra to help out especially children. The idea sort of blossomed …”

BRCRC keeps a list of volunteer drivers for Food for Thought, and Ports, with Stover’s help, found enough drivers to deliver all the meals. They even had to turn away a few drivers.

“I just wanted to give Brady's and Thistle some credit because they were closing up … and they donated food to us so our chefs could figure out what they could do and how to throw it all together,” said Teel. “Waves Restaurant, too, because they also donated some of the packing materials.”

Ports Pizzeria chefs Tim Bennett and Patrick Jones cooked up meatloaf dishes with rice, carrots and gravy; when those ran out, spaghetti bolognaise dishes; and when the spaghetti ran out, pizzas.

“It's for 31 families which feeds 64 children and the total household number is around 100 people. That's what they are doing today,” Stover said. “What Ports Pizzeria is trying to do is supplement our families. They're getting school lunches and that's awesome. This is just another way to help.”

Teel said Ports Pizzeria plans to doing the same thing for Food for Thought March 26 and Meals on Wheels March 29. “We'll do this for a few weeks to see how it goes ... In this time we want to keep everybody safe and we're going to do whatever we can for this community because it's a very giving community.”