"Pepper" sits outside Hippie Kitchen (Photo by Tiffanie Cheng)

From afar, their building blends in with the surroundings of Skid Row.

The exterior of the building features a dark smoky mural of worn travelers seeking comfort in the light of a mysterious figure with a halo around his head.

Inside the courtyard, tall trees shade an array of stone benches and tables that welcome visitors to sit and await their meal being prepared inside.

The Hippie Kitchen is located on 821 E. Sixth Street in the heart of central Los Angeles, which has been dubiously coined “the homeless capital of the nation.”

Founded in 1970, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker offers a lay Catholic community of men and women that operate the free soup kitchen and a hospitality house for the homeless. They operate three days a week, for two and a half hours on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. 

Katherine Morris, 77, has worked at the food kitchen for over 39 years and is as close to the visitors as her own family.

“We work completely off donations—we don’t accept grants so everything is on us. We try to keep the quantity and quality of the meals we serve the same, but everything has been difficult to maintain,” she says.

Today the soup kitchen served a hot dish with different kinds of beans mixed in. They always serve a green salad and a side of bread and butter to accompany the hot entrée of the day.

The kitchen is made up primarily of community members and has no problems managing employees, but the cost of operating the food service is taking its toll. Food prices have raised and providing the homeless with good quality produce and meats has become more difficult than ever.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are the hardest to provide at the kitchen, with food prices rising at a steady rate. Morris says the kitchen also attempts to put meat in their hot dishes every once in a while, but sometimes the market price for beef or chicken just doesn’t work with their budget.

“We try to put meat towards the beginning of the month, but towards the end when we have more visitors we usually avoid it—it makes our lines much longer,” she said.

Morris reveals they receive free bread donations a couple times a month. However on occasions when they do not receive the delivery, they are forced to pay as much as $100 a day just to provide enough bread to feed their visitors.

Last year, the Hippie Kitchen was able to operate with a budget of $120,000, however due to increasing food prices their project fell several thousand short to $115,000 this year. With food taking up an even larger chunk of its resources, the kitchen has less money to fund its other necessary components, such as its bi-monthly magazine and kitchen maintenance. 

Longtime volunteer David Osmonde reflects on the effects of the recent economic downturn on the organization, “We just haven’t been able to do as much. There is a greater need now to serve these citizens in the community but in general we haven’t been able to accommodate them. Luckily we have been able to expand, but not as much as we’d like to.” Osmonde has been working full-time at the Soup Kitchen for several years and puts in around 40-50 hours a week into the operation.

The Hippie Kitchen serves about 1,500 clients a month, a little less than it was able to serve the previous year. Typically, they receive more visitors towards the end of the month after several of their clients run out of their Social Security payments.

The organization survives mostly on donations it receives from a mailing list they send out to around 15,000 people in a bimonthly publication, the Agitator. It is able to fund the project solely through donations that it solicits through the magazine.

In addition to the much-needed donations, the future success of the soup kitchen relies on their most valuable asset: its base of volunteers. While the Hippie Kitchen’s current budget has affected ability to provide for the homeless food-wise, there is no shortage of volunteers. 

“We have been fortunate to have a consistent base for over forty years of volunteers, some of them have been coming for over ten to fifteen years. These volunteers are from all walks of life. We have teachers, ex-priests, and wealthy residents from the west side of town”, Osmonde said.

A homeless man who goes by Pepper, a regular visitor, says that he isn’t too concerned about the economic troubles on the kitchen.

“Big businesses, small business, we’re all going to feel it, no matter what…[but] we’ve got food and love. We’re gonna make it through,” he said.

The Hippie Kitchen has been his home for many years.

 “I’ve never heard of this place but one day I was about to start a fight outside the kitchen and Katherine comes out and says ‘This is the Hippie Kitchen, please take your business somewhere else.’ I asked her, ‘What do you know?’ and she says, ‘I know you’re hungry. Do you want some food?’ and she gave me my first meal. I haven’t left since,” he says. 

Reach Tiffanie Cheng here.