Manna Cafe sees spike in serving since Jan. launch

Inside of a kitchen at the Christ United Methodist Church, volunteers prepare food and clean for guests of the Manna Café .

The café is the brain child of church members Bill and Fran Lytle. It dishes out free lunches every Monday.

Since their January launch, Bill tells 47ABC the number of people they serve has grown ten-fold. The café first served about 14 people; however, it's swelled to more than 100 people this Monday.

"The panic time comes at around 11:30 [a.m.], quarter to 12, 12 o'clock when it's really busy and everybody goes…'We don't have enough food! What do we do?'" explains Bill. "Then we kind of settle down, and it turns out that we usually have just about enough food."

The Chincoteague couple has lived in Accomack County for nearly eight years. They moved to Virgnia's Eastern Shore from central New Jersey; however, Fran says they had been involved in food ministries before moving .

While helping with an annual church effort known as "Harvest Basket", which delivers food to those in need around the holidays, Fran says the idea for expanding their outreach started to take shape.

She says they are now in the process of preparing to feed up to 200 people in one sitting; however, it doesn't come cheap. It costs roughly three dollars to feed each person, so they're working on creating partnerships with local farmers for fresh produce and poultry producers to provide the protein.

"We need volunteers, we need funding, we need desserts, but important than that we need to spread the word," says Fran.

In terms of monetary support, they recently began setting out a donation box.

"We heard from so many people that said 'I love the cooking, and I love the company, I would like to come but I don't really want to eat for free. If you put your box out there, I can put some money in there.', so that's definitely helping us on a week to week basis," Fran explains.

The Lytles tells 47ABC they hope the café makes a dent in addressing hunger in Accomack County. Data from FeedingAmerica.org shows about 4,800 people are food insecure in the county, 1,400 of which are children.

"It is heartbreaking when kids do not enough to eat. Parents and families too, but when kids don't get enough to eat, it breaks our hearts so our whole motivation is to make sure that everybody on Chincoteague Island…no hunger is on Chincoteague Island," says Bill.

Fran says even organizations outside of Delmarva heard about what they're doing and reached out to her and her husband Bill for more information.

"I heard from a minister in the outskirts of Philadelphia and she says "I think this was a wonderful ministry. Our area needed it too. Would you help us if we have any questions?," she explains. "Bill and I are willing to help anyone, because there's a lot of slippery slopes in the beginning you start something up so we're happy to mentor anybody."

We're told roughly 18 to 20 volunteers help out every Monday. If you'd like to get involved or would like to donate, please contact Fran Lytle at fran@brandchamps.com.