Elon Dining Services prepares hundreds of Thanksgiving meals

In order to meet a community need, employees prepared turkey and all the fixings to be served through Allied Churches of Alamance County.

Almost a thousand Thanksgiving meals will be served to community members in need after employees from Aramark and other Elon Auxiliary Services departments teamed up to prepare and package food that will be delivered to Allied Churches of Alamance County.

About 30 workers from Elon Dining Services, Print Services, Mail Services and Barnes & Noble at Elon University gathered in Lakeside Dining Hall on Tuesday morning to cook enough roasted turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, gravy and stuffing for 850 people.

“It’s a great way of connecting with the community,” said Pulkit Vigg, who took over as resident district manager for dining at Elon this summer. “When I came into this role, I met with our Campus Kitchen partners and asked them what more we can do to help the community. And this idea came up, that the Allied Churches need help during Thanksgiving. So we said, ‘We’re going to do all of it.'”

The food will be delivered to Allied Churches on Wednesday and will then be served at the organization’s shelter and two local churches on Thanksgiving day.

“Our mission statement is that we deliver experiences that enrich and nourish lives,” Vigg said. “And I think this fits perfectly into our mission statement because we are enriching and nourishing lives of people who really need it the most. And we do it on a daily basis with our students, but this is just taking another step and involving the community.”