Empty Bowl Project supports Comfort food pantry

Empty Bowl Project supports Comfort food pantry

BY JEFF B. FLINN Managing Editor

Amid the hustle and bustle of last weekend’s Comfort Art Festival, a group of residents lounged on the patio outside Just Chillin’ in Comfort for two hours. The patio’s shade offered a brief respite for passing art lovers from the late morning’s 90-plus degree heat.

The shady patio was also a destination for supporters of the Comfort Table and Food Pantry’s annual Empty Bowl Project, a fundraiser for the all-volunteer organization’s food and meal site.

Roy Die, president of the Comfort Table and Food Pantry board, said the Empty Bowl Project came into being when local artist Brian Burckhardt, of Hill Country Pottery, suggested the effort to raise funds necessary to support the pantry.

“Brian generously offered a couple years ago to get bowls, art bowls, and then sell them as a fundraiser,” Die said. “Between Brian and his artists and my wife (Susan Die), who is also a glass artist, we get somewhere between 80 and 150 bowls contributed a year and then sell them for about $25.”

Empty Bowls is a grassroots movement by artists and crafts people in cities and towns around the world to raise money for food-related charities to care for and feed the hungry in their communities.

The Sept. 16 Comfort Empty Bowls Project outside Just Chillin’ was no exception.

Burckhardt and Susan Die were among the 15 artists who contributed the 110 bowls that were sold that day. Advanced tickets sold online, and with walk-up sales, by 11:30 am. only a half-dozen of the bowls remained.

Each purchase also earned the buyer a free cup of Skyline Gelato to enjoy when returning to browse the art festival.

“We run entirely off donations, as an entire volunteer operation,” Die said. “As part of that, we have to raise funds, which we use primarily to buy food from the San Antonio Food Bank and some of the other large charities in the area.

“This has become one of our primary fundraisers,” he added.

The Comfort Food Pantry is open 3-5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, boxing up food from the S.A. Food Bank and sending it home with families in need.

“People come and get a box of food, some meat, fresh when we have it, and some other goodies when we have them,” Die said. “We feed approximately 300-450 people in the 100150 families that come through here.”

The 501-C-3 has been around for six or seven years, he said, which took over for an effort previously run by Immanuel Lutheran Church, providing an active pantry since 1993.

“No one should have to go without food,” the Comfort Table and Food Pantry website states. “Whether the person is elderly and their social security check just won't stretch enough, a single mother trying to feed her kids … (and) layoffs happen. Homelessness. Even the working poor; anything can happen to cause a need for assistance.”

The money raised by the Sept. 16 bowl sale “goes to what little overhead we have,” Die said, “buying food, and then hopefully buying land to put a building on, in the near future,” as the organization uses Immanual Lutheran Church for the “table” portion of its name, its Wednesday night meal.

'Again, all volunteer-operated, we provide the food for a Wednesday meal served from 5:30-6:30 or 7 p.m., or when they run out of food. And they have run out of food on some occasions,” Die said. “That’s been well attended, with upward of 100 people some nights.”

Between the 2020 pandemic and recent high inflation, Die said the table and food pantry saw its numbers begin to swell.

“ Seniors on fixed incomes, low- income families, we have a lot of different families show up,” he said. “It's a growing need. The number of people we feed has gone up dramatically in the last couple of years.”

Pantry volunteers, he said, work with families and individuals who come to the pantry.

“We know the toughest thing for some people to do is to walk in there and say, ‘I need help,’” Die said. “We try to be as welcoming as we can to them and tell them there’s no stigma attached.”