Gas or groceries? What would you do if you had to choose? Seriously. It’s not an easy choice. One out of every six families in the Tampa Bay region has to decide this every day. The circumstances differ, but the result is the same for families struggling to make it to their next paycheck or for seniors living on a fixed income. Nutritious food is hard to come by when your budget is limited. That’s why at Metropolitan Ministries, requests for food assistance come on a daily basis. Anyone hungry can be fed through targeted services to meet their needs.
How you can provide food
We serve 132,660 meals each month in Tampa Bay and at partner sites around Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas counties. Metropolitan Ministries serves as many as 30,000 families in need with holiday meals.
There are so many ways you can help!
- Give a Box of Hope: Each food box is filled with nutritious essentials from our Metro Market and will feed a family for three days.
- Provide Hot Meals: A good, hot meal is a step toward hope. Nutritious, hot meals for individuals and families are prepared at Metropolitan Ministries and distributed to partner sites.
- Volunteer: Serve a meal, host a food drive, stock shelves in the Metro Market, or serve in the Holiday Tent.
Where we serve food
We are growing to meet the most urgent needs of the Tampa area’s families in need. Our main Family Support Center is in downtown Tampa, but we have an additional Outreach Center in Pasco County. We also work with different partners in these locations:
- Pinellas County: We partner with Safe Harbor emergency homeless shelter in Clearwater, Florida, providing food boxes for families and low-income seniors.
- Hillsborough County: More than 100 families — including 300 children — eat in the MiraclePlace dining room every day. Also, 12,000 meals are cooked here weekly and sent out to partner meal sites around the county.
- Polk County: Community partners are helping to expand the availability of hot meals to hungry families.
Metro Meal Site Partners
We have partnered with organizations around Tampa Bay to provide hot, balanced, and nutritious meals. If your faith group, civic group, agency or nonprofit is interested in becoming a regular, or seasonal, Meal Site Partner to serve homeless and at-risk individuals and families, please email meal.site@metromin.org.
Contact us
Metropolitan Ministries Family Support Center
2301 North Tampa St., Tampa, FL 33602
(813) 209-1200
Metropolitan Ministries Outreach Center
3216 US Highway 19, Holiday, FL 34691
(727) 937-3268