Tulsa's Meals On Wheels Expects To Serve More With Renovated Kitchen

Tulsa's Meals on Wheels program has a new place to feed even more hungry people across Green Country, and the new kitchen means better, healthier meals. 

"This kitchen was a part of the original vision for the expansion of services, so what we've done is doubled the capacity of the kitchen from 300,000 meals to 600,000 meals," Meals On Wheels officials said. 

MOW expanded its capacity of their cooking machines, utensils and types of machines they use, which in turn, will allow them to retain a lot of the nutritional density of the food because of the cooking methods. 

"That means serving fewer processed foods and serving more whole foods, particularly as it relates to proteins," officials said. 

Meals on Wheels hopes the new kitchen will help them reach its big goals, recruiting 1,000 more volunteers, identifying 2,500 more clients, raising $3.5 million per year and delivering more than one million meals each year. 

The state-of-the-art kitchen will enable MOW to serve more than 600,000 meals per year—more than twice the number of meals delivered in 2014—to Tulsa’s residents who are homebound and/or disabled.

The new construction allows hot food to be packaged and directly loaded into vehicles for deliveries. This increase in proficiency ensures meals stay at the correct temperature, decreasing the opportunity for food to spoil. Additionally, a modernized dry food storage system in the MOW warehouse keeps goods off the floor making the space easier to clean.

Meals on Wheels hopes the new kitchen will help them reach its big goals, recruiting 1,000 more volunteers, identifying 2,500 more clients, raising $3.5 million per year and delivering more than one million meals each year.