Skyrocketing demand for meals and groceries from Soup Bus is leaving the volunteer organisation struggling to keep up as cost of living pressures bite.
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Six months after opening an indoor facility at Wendouree they are serving around 70 people the equivalent of about 140 serves of food each Tuesday and Thursday night, while around 70 people a night are also visiting its mobile bus site five nights a week in Ballarat's CBD.
Families and women are increasingly among the diners, and those picking up non-perishable food to get them through days when the hot meal service is not available.
Soup Bus founder Craig Schepis said the twice-weekly service at the old Wendouree Neighbourhood House started slowly in November 2023 with around six people coming in but early in the new year that jumped to around 30 diners and in recent months had soared to around 70.
"That's for a sit-down meal. We write up the menu, they choose and we wait on the table for them," Mr Schepis said.
Many diners have two to three serves of dinner, along with sweets and a hot Milo, tea or coffee with their meal. They then shop from the Soup Bus pantry for non-perishable items to take with them.
"A full pantry used to get us through quite a number of weeks but now we stock the pantry prior to (opening on) Tuesday and by Thursday night end of shift it is empty," he said.
"Our dilemma is we want to be able to open more nights to try and settle the system down a bit and allow them more opportunity to come but the problem is ... we can't keep up with the food."
Soup Bus has also recently introduced a Saturday morning cooking shift to prepare meals in advance for the week ahead to use in addition to batches of meals donated from local cafes, restaurants, pubs, bakeries and other providers.
Mr Schepis said numbers at both sites had doubled over the past few months - mainly due to the increasing cost of living.
"Money is tight and there are more and more families who don't have a home or rental," he said. "It's so difficult to break in to the rental market even if they can afford it.
"So many things are not affordable at the moment and it's really breaking people. The financial stress is horrible when you worry about money or even when are you going to eat, or if you've got children trying to keep them in school and fed."
Mr Schepis said demand started to increase at Soup Bus just before Christmas but "probably since the new year or February, numbers have just gone through the roof," he said.
"We are packing so many bags and hampers and boxes (of non-perishable goods) for people to get them through, especially on a Thursday because we don't come back until Sunday."
And he fears numbers will increase again as winter hits and when Uniting close Reid's Guesthouse in August or September.
"I don't know where it ends. We are going to keep doing what we do and hope enough is enough," he said.
Men aged 20 to 40 have traditionally been the biggest demographic of Soup Bus clients but Mr Schepis said increasingly they were seeing more older women, single parents and their children, and two-parent families seeking assistance.
"In Wendouree we are probably getting more families, and we are getting more and more people come to Soup Bus in cars as families to get non-perishable items," he said.
"We are seeing a rise in women and my concern, and there has been plenty in the media, is in regard to over 50 females with some of the trauma they have endured and been left with not a lot financially.
"That's certainly on the rise and my other concern now is younger females in situations of domestic violence. I just hope we can step up as not just a community but as a nation as more needs to be done in that space ... and our numbers seem to be growing more with women."
The generosity of the Ballarat community is helping Soup Bus feed its most vulnerable residents.
Each time Soup Bus put out a call for non-perishable items to be donated, generous donors deliver with goods being dropped off each Wednesday from 9.30am to 11am, or the first and third Saturday of the month at the same time, at their base behind Ballarat East Men's shed at the corner of Fussell and Eureka streets.
"It's almost like a weekly call out at the moment," Mr Schepis said. "Our shipping container weekly is getting absolutely smashed but we get a lot of good people see our calls and react and it's huge.
"A lot of the community realise we are absolutely under the pump but there's so many community members, individuals, families and businesses that are topping us up weekly."
- The Soup Bus currently needs: canned meals with ring tops, noodle cups, sliced cheese, margarine, tinned vegetables, rice, Nescafe (in the large size), 1 litre long life custard, tinned spaghetti, jelly packets, tea bags, Milo, tinned tuna, 1lt UHT milk, Cup of Soups.
