Welcome Hall Mission’s new kitchen will prepare up to 10,000 meals a day

Montreal’s Welcome Hall Mission is preparing to open a new multi-million-dollar kitchen that will allow staff to produce up to 10,000 meals a day, significantly expanding the organization’s capacity to serve people across the city.

The kitchen, nearly eight years in the making, represents an investment of about $2 million, with an additional $5 million spent on infrastructure. The funding was made possible through donations.

The facility has received a C1 rating from Quebec’s agriculture ministry, MAPAQ, the highest classification for food preparation, and the same standard required for food produced in grocery stores. Once fully operational, between 12 and 24 people will work in the kitchen at any given time.

“Ultimately, I think this is going to be a place that serves Montreal,” said Welcome Hall Mission CEO Sam Watts.

Watts said the kitchen will operate seven days a week and will allow the organization to prepare meals not only for its own shelters and free grocery stores, but also for other groups in need.

“It’ll allow us to serve other organizations that need meals produced for them, as well as be able to serve pre-prepared meals for our various facilities and for our free grocery stores,” he said.

“The ability to serve Montrealers is unlimited in this space, just because of the type of equipment and the capacity we have,” Watts added.

Some of the food used in the kitchen will be donated, but much of it will also be purchased to ensure the volume and consistency required for large-scale meal production.

Watts said many of the meals prepared will be familiar comfort foods suited to mass production.

“Imagine spaghetti and meatballs, imagine lasagna, imagine things like pâté chinois,” he said. “There are a lot of things that we can do in kind of a mass production setting.”

The upgraded facility will also include space for hospitality students, offering hands-on training opportunities in a professional kitchen.

“It’s really cool to see this program because when they start, they often don’t know which end of a knife to use,” Watts said. “And by the time they’re finished, they’re really fully equipped and trained to be able to operate in a hotel or restaurant kitchen.”

Organizations across Montreal collectively produce between 12,000 and 20,000 meals each day to serve people in need.