CINCINNATI — A local catering company is ready to crank out 1,800 meals a day for the summer to provide children with free meals as part of the Ohio Summer Feeding Program.
Magnificent Morsels Catering, which operates out of Findlay Kitchen, makes fresh, healthy meals, and that's one of the reasons why the company was selected to feed children over the summer months.
"(Children) need real meals," said Crystal Render, owner of Magnificent Morsels Catering. "Parents are working, COVID has made everything a little more difficult, and, like I said, prices are crazy... So if they can get a free meal and it's a real meal, it can be helpful to any family."
Making all 1,800 meals can be hard though.
"It's a difficult task. Obviously with COVID, everything is 10 times more," Render said.
But she comes from a big family, and that means she always has others she can rely on. Render's sisters, Veronica, Paula and Val, help with the prep work, cooking and packing. Render is also teaching her nephew Ricky how to cook, as well as training her daughter Jasmine so that one day she can run her own kitchen.
"We cook like this on the normal," Render said. "So this is just a normal day for us, and we multiply it by like 10."
When the pandemic hit, Render and her team partnered with La Soupe to cook and provide meals for those in need. That is where the team perfected their mass production of these meals, and helping those in need motivates Render and her team every day.
"We were providing meals for shelters, nursing homes and school systems so that people could pick up free meals for the food insecure," Render said. "It's what keeps the employees working."
