FOREST PARK, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A west suburban establishment is opening its doors to feed people throughout the area - for free.
On one Tuesday each month, Exit Strategy Brewing Company, on Madison in Forest Park, hosts a "Soup and Bread" night in which local cooks - both professional and amateur - donate soup and bread and then people offer a donation, with the money going to local food banks.
Katherine Valleau is the owner of Exit Strategy. She told WBBM on a recent busy Soup and Bread night that it's great "watching the community come together to do this, and to support the soup and bread efforts, to support the Forest Park Food Pantry and then subsequently to support us and come to the door and hang out, which is great, too."
Eileen D'Ambrogio had cooked up some soup and said it's a simple plan.
"People can come and they donate what they want and they can eat as much soup as they want, and it's once a month."
Food Pantries on Chicago's West Side, Oak Park, Forest Park, Elmwood Park, and Westchester are among those benefiting.
Martha Bayne started it all more than a decade ago when she was bartending at "The Hideout" on the North Side and she has also written a Soup and Bread cookbook.
"I had this idea that I would just get some people to bring some pots of soup to the bar and we would invite people to come by have some soup, take some donations and donate them to a local food pantry, and that's basically how it started."
Sarah Corbin is with Beyond Hunger, which is one of the organizations that benefits from the donations.
"There are hungry people everywhere. We're located in Oak Park and there are 7,000 people, who use our food pantry every year just from Oak Park alone," she said.
"We serve 42,000 people. That's just thirteen zip codes, annually."
Valleau said hunger has no permanent address.
"Food insecurity is real and it is around and we can do something about and this is how we do things about it."
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