A Place to Sit and Be Seen

Dining Room closed for staff training June 22 through July 5 

The Food for Lane County Dining Room sits on W. 8th Avenue in downtown Eugene, between Lincoln and Charnelton streets. Four days a week, adults and children with a guardian come through its doors for a free, hot meal. For many people, it’s more than a meal. The Dining Room is a place where they can sit down, feel safe and be treated with respect. 

Four days a week, Dining Room Program Manager Josie McCarthy, along with three full-time staff, three part-time staff and about 30 volunteers prepare and serve between 200 and 300 meals each day — about 40,000 meals over the course of a year. The program relies on the kindness of hundreds of volunteers, who donated more than 4,000 hours of their time last year. 

One recent morning, Senior Manager of Programs Susan Doig noticed a woman waiting outside before the doors opened. The woman looked to be in her late sixties. Her hair was neatly done, and she wore a simple summer outfit: a tank top and shorts. 

She told Susan that she was originally from San Jose. She moved to Oregon a few years ago when her son came here for work. Her son is raising a teenage boy, and sometimes things become tense at home and she needs to leave for a while. 

The woman explained that other places she had gone for help felt chaotic and frightening. People shouted. Tempers flared. She often left feeling anxious and unsafe. 

Then she described her first visit to the Dining Room. 

“No one was yelling at me,” she said. “I sat in a booth with a cloth napkin on my lap and real silverware in my hands, and I started crying.” She paused before adding, “I felt like a real person again.” 

She told Susan that the meals were so good they would cost twenty dollars in a restaurant. But what mattered most was not the food itself. It was the way people spoke to her. Staff greeted her calmly. Volunteers treated her kindly. No one rushed her or made her feel like a burden. 

“Hearing the woman’s story captured the heart of the Dining Room better than any brochure could,” Susan said. “The goal is not only to feed people, but to offer dignity along with the meal.” 

That mission is reflected in the training staff and volunteers take seriously. During the Dining Room’s annual closure from June 22 through July 5, dining room staff will participate in training, including a tour of St. Vincent de Paul social services and de-escalation training focused on supporting people living with severe mental illness or in crisis. The Dining Room will reopen to guests on Monday, July 6. 

For the woman from San Jose, the Dining Room offered something simple but powerful: a quiet place, a warm meal, and the feeling that she mattered.