Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Doc Bethke reads the newspaper and enjoying his coffee after eating breakfast at the Worland Senior Citizens Center Thursday morning with Stan Skinner, Clarence Beck, Stu Wostenberg, Robet Fritzler and Larry McGonigal.
Ruth Dugger and Connie Wostenberg enjoy ham and veggie omletes, fruit, juice, coffee and toast Thursday morning at the Worland Senior Citizens Center.
WORLAND – In December the Worland Senior Citizens Center started a new service, serving breakfast every Thursday morning from 7:30 – 9 a.m. as a way to bring in new clientele and increase their numbers to maintain funding.
"We get granted so much money and for each meal we serve we get a percentage of that funding, so at the end of the year if we haven't served enough meals to collect all of our state and federal funds, we just don't get it, so if our numbers drop and the next year we need that money, we don't have it. You never want to not utilize your grant money because then you are at risk of not getting that much, when you need it," Worland Senior Citizens Center Executive Director Wendy Fredricks explained. "The goal is to not try to hit our numbers by doing something that is not fiscally responsible. We definitely get more bang for a buck by having a breakfast. Between our client portion and state and federal funds, the loss is less than if we were doing two-for-ones [like last quarter]," she added.
"We are being proactive to try to make sure that we are going to be able to utilize all of our funding by our meal counts without having to struggle at the end of the year. Between our breakfast and Sunday dinner, we are going to hit about where we should be each month," Fredricks said.
Thursday morning breakfast at the senior center, for now, has been scheduled for the next quarter; January, February and March, Fredricks said. She added that yesterday's breakfast brought in 36 people. "As long as it keeps going the way it is we will probably keep doing it. Right now we are running about well over 100 meals behind each month that we are not hitting. So this will, even if we get 36 people, that's 144 meals [per month], it should take care of our count," Fredricks said.
Fredricks stated that at first she was concerned that serving breakfast would affect the lunch numbers but also feels there are two kinds of people; breakfast people and non-breakfast people. Some people she said look forward to a large breakfast, as they were raised with breakfast being the big meal of the day. Others skip breakfast and make lunch a sort of brunch. Either way, yesterday morning the center saw some new faces and some breakfast goers returning to also have lunch.
