Fort Saskatchewan duo to donate 800 meals on Wednesday; 900 planned for next week

A pair of Fort Saskatchewan business owners are preparing to donate 800 meals on Wednesday to people who could use them.

For the past eight weeks, Kelsey Kuefler and Steven Ken Dalida have been working to provide a meal to anyone in the community—no questions asked.

“Feed the Fort” is an initiative created by the couple that owns The Venue, after the local food bank went through operational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We just wanted to help out in any way that we could for families that weren’t getting the access to the food bank,” Kuefler said.

“So we thought, if the food bank’s not here… we can be the food bank.”

Share this on X Click to share quote on X: "So we thought, if the food bank's not here… we can be the food bank."

On March 18, 72 meals were delivered. Last week’s delivery run reached 700 meals.

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As of Wednesday, when 800 meals will be dropped off, a total of 3,000 meals will have been donated as a result of the initiative.

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“It really is an eye-opener that there are a lot of people that need help and don’t want to ask for help,” Kuefler said.

Share this on X Click to share quote on X: "It really is an eye-opener that there are a lot of people that need help and don't want to ask for help," Kuefler said.

Next week, the duo plan to distribute 900 meals in one day.

A typical Feed the Fort delivery day can run between 16 to 18 hours long, according to Kuefler.

“We start around 5 a.m.,” Dalida said. “We have a few staff members, some friends. Our delivery drivers are mostly volunteers.”

Community donations from businesses and individuals have allowed The Venue to increase production.

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“We just wanted to help in the way we could help — once you start, you can’t really stop. You don’t want to go backwards,” Kuefler said.

“We want to keep giving more and more and more. We have the donations to do so. We have the community behind us to do so. We just want to help as many people as we can.

Share this on X Click to share quote on X: "We want to keep giving more and more and more. We have the donations to do so. We have the community behind us to do so. We just want to help as many people as we can.

They also plan to keep the initiative running, even after the pandemic is over.

“How? I don’t know yet. But the answer is yes. We are committed to this program” Dalida said. “We’ve been through tough times too. We know the feeling. We want to help more families.”

If you’d like to donate to the Feed the Fort program, you can send monetary donations to kenscatering.fortsask@gmail.com or drop off a donation at The Venue.