Park Slope Soup Kitchen Hosts Emergency Fundraiser For New Fridge

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A local homeless shelter and soup kitchen has set up an emergency fundraiser to help replace a refrigerator, which died over the holidays.

The refrigerator — which Interim Director Brother Tom Barton said has been packed for every minute of its 12-year lifespan — first broke down the Monday before Christmas.

"...It stopped working and was repaired again that very day. The repairman said the machine would probably not last much longer," Barton told Patch, adding that the repair allowed it to last through the Christmas rush on Dec. 23. "Sometime over the Christmas holiday it died."

With the help of neighbors, the organization has raised nearly $2,000 of the $7,964 price-tag to replace the fridge in just a few days time.

Through a GoFundMe, it hopes to bring in the additional $4,520 or so.

Barton said the fridge is a necessary tool in CHiPS day-to-day operations, both before and during the coronavirus pandemic.

CHiPS serves as many as 175 people daily.

Each of those serving bags is meant to include two hot meals, a meal donated by the nonprofit Rethink, two or three sandwiches, a bottle of water and a dessert.

"We are successful in this, I dare say, 95 percent of the time," Barton said.

Typically, the refrigerator is used to store fresh vegetable and fruit deliveries brought in five days a week from the Park Slope Food Coops. It has recently become a spot to put after-hours donations to be served in the morning during CHiPS' pop-up style serving hours during the pandemic.

Donations brought in through the GoFundMe will be used to pay for the new fridge.

"Any additional money will go directly to CHiPS to provide our neighbors in need with more than 100,000 meals annually and to shelter and counsel homeless young mothers and their infants," organizers write.