Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels opens new location in Cheney | News

SPOKANE, Wash. – Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels is opening a new Silver Cafe in Cheney at the United Methodist Church located at 204 4th St.

The Silver Cafe will be open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 am to 1 pm

With the opening of the new Cheney location, Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels will near the completion of its post-Covid revamp of their rural congregate meal programs. The goal of the program was designed to offer rural seniors more flexibility and more access to get together at a dining site on any given week.

The rural congregate dining sites operate on a one or two day a week schedule where seniors can gather for a warm meal, soup, salad, and conversation. Seniors can also receive to-go meals or frozen meals to take with them for days when the congregate site is not open.

Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels has been able to open locations in Airway Heights, Deer Park, Rockford, Spangle, and now Cheney.

“One of the many lessons we learned during the pandemic was that it was difficult for rural seniors to make arrangements to attend a location every single day, just to receive a meal that day,” said Jeff Edwards, Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels executive director. “However, they would make arrangements and plan around larger distributions if there was local access. This approach allows us to manage resources in a way to ensure that local access in rural geographic areas is possible.”

In 2021, Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels served over 220,000 meals to local seniors through its congregate and meal delivery program. To achieve this mission, the organization is always in need of volunteers for both food delivery and their congregate meal programs. If you are interested in volunteering, you can head to this link.

Any senior over the age of 60 in need of nutritional assistance should contact Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels to find a local congregate meal program or home delivered meals.