page_title: Soup kitchen
hierarchical_section_title: Soup kitchen
caption_attribution_description: English: People eating at a soup kitchen. Montreal, CanadaFrançais&#160;: Personnes mangeant dans une soupe populaire. Montréal, Canada.
context_page_description: A soup kitchen, meal center, or food kitchen is a place where food is offered to the hungry usually for free or sometimes at a below-market price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, soup kitchens are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes obtain food from a food bank for free or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed the many people who require their services.
  Many historical and typical modern soup kitchens serve only soup, usually with some bread. But several establishments which refer to themselves as a "soup kitchen" also serve other types of food, so social scientists sometimes discuss them together with similar hunger relief agencies that provide more varied hot meals, like food kitchens and meal centers.
  While societies have been using various methods to share food with the hungry for millennia, the first soup kitchens in the modern sense may have emerged in the late 18th century. By the late 19th century, they were located in several American and European cities.
context_section_description: A soup kitchen, meal center, or food kitchen is a place where food is offered to the hungry usually for free or sometimes at a below-market price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, soup kitchens are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes obtain food from a food bank for free or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed the many people who require their services.
  Many historical and typical modern soup kitchens serve only soup (hence its name), usually with some bread. But several establishments which refer to themselves as a "soup kitchen" also serve other types of food, so social scientists sometimes discuss them together with similar hunger relief agencies that provide more varied hot meals, like food kitchens and meal centers.
  While societies have been using various methods to share food with the hungry for millennia, the first soup kitchens in the modern sense may have emerged in the late 18th century. By the late 19th century, they were located in several American and European cities. In the United States and elsewhere, they became more prominent in the 20th century, especially during the Great Depression. With the much improved economic conditions that immediately followed World War II, soup kitchens became less widely used, at least in the advanced economies. In the United States, there was a resurgence in the use of soup kitchens following the cutbacks in welfare that were implemented in the early 1980s.
  In the 21st century, the use of soup kitchens expanded in both the United States and Europe, following lasting global increases in the price of food which began in late 2006. Demand for their services grew as the Great Recession began to worsen economic conditions for those with lower incomes. In much of Europe, demand further increased after the introduction of austerity-based economic policies from 2010.
caption: A soup kitchen in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1931
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