Bread Before Dawn
A volunteer bakery that fires up its ovens at 4 am and delivers still-warm loaves to shelters, night-shift nurses, and transit workers before the city wakes up.
Most food programs serve lunch or dinner. Almost nobody is feeding the people who are awake at 5 am: the shelter residents who have to be out the door by six, the nurses coming off a twelve-hour shift, the bus drivers starting their first route. Bread Before Dawn borrows the ovens of a neighborhood bakery for three hours before it opens. A crew of volunteers mixes and shapes the dough the night before, bakes it in the small hours, and loads warm loaves into insulated bags on bike trailers. By 6:30 the bread is gone and the bakery is ready for its own customers. We started with one oven and forty loaves a week. With your help we can run five mornings a week and reach every shelter in North Philly.
Flour, yeast, and salt for a year of baking (about 9,000 loaves): $2,400 Two insulated bike trailers and delivery bags: $1,100 Proofing baskets, bread knives, and cooling racks: $450 Food handler certification for 15 volunteers: $250
Bakers work a 4 to 7 am shift, two per morning. Riders pick up at 6 am and deliver along fixed routes until about 7:15. Dough-prep volunteers come in the evening before for about ninety minutes. We will train everyone; no baking experience needed.
- For the shelter residents who start each day with nowhere certain to go
- For safety for our riders on dark winter streets
- That the bakery partnership stays strong and other bakeries join in
- For stamina and good humor at four in the morning
Hands still needed
Hours are the organizer's estimates. A shift may run a little longer or shorter than listed.