OSL Serves

OSL brief history

What began as a one-day project in 1989 with the delivery of 30 organic lunches down to the Pioneer Square area of Seattle is now the largest Meal Provider in the State of WA.

OSL Serves prepares, delivers, and serves more than 7000 meals each day of the year which equates to 3,525,790 pounds of food annually. Thanksgiving and Christmas we do an additional 4000 meals..

 OSL works 365 days a year, mostly under the radar, without fanfare, but are well known with our City, County, and State partners. We have been told that we are the "Gold Standard" that the bar has been set to. We have been instrumental in changing minds, changing policy, and building a system that works towards Food Sovereignty and Food Equity – Balance and Choice.

 In 2024 we built a 13,000 square foot building into a 5500 square foot commercial kitchen, a 6000 square foot warehouse and 1500 square foot office. It allowed us to be instrumental in building a system that benefits the many programs that work towards hunger relief. We provide cold, frozen, and dry goods, overflow storage in our warehouse, for the emergency food system, including the 52 other meal provider agencies we represent with our Meals Partnership Coalition and our food bank partners as well.

We understand that if we lose even the smallest meal provider, people will go hungry, and so we contribute our resources and our energy, with our gratitude and support. We never say, no… We just figure it out. 

Our commercial kitchen is equipped to prepare 15,000 meals daily, and our warehouse accommodates the emergency food system with a 20 x 50 foot cold and frozen storage unit, as well as dry ingredient storage. We have three other comparable sized units for our own product storage.

Food In Motion, our food recovery and redistribution program, which we began in 2008, now recovers more than 3 million pounds annually which we re-distribute to programs working in hunger relief, and organizations needing nutritional support. We recover and redistribute around 57,000 pounds each week that comes through our warehouse. 

Aside from our Food in Motion recovery work, we also deliver food product weekly to 26 city funded organizations, and our dock and warehouse is open daily to hunger relief organizations; meal providers, food banks, shelters, etc, to "shop" our shelves, at no cost, for items they might need or want. We redistribute raw product; dry goods, protein, and produce, to meal providers, food banks, shelters, and other organizations throughout King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. We don't just recover and redistribute food, but also dishes, cutlery, gloves, foil, pans, bedding... You name it!  

We have 17 vehicles in our fleet, 7 are refrigerated to guarantee temperature chain of custody, and we have a 26-foot, state-of-the-art food truck. 

We have been instrumental in creating and building a system that benefits many communities.  

We self-describe ourselves as a little band of misfits...We have changed and saved many lives. We have also been told that we are the "go to" organization when additional immediate emergency services are required.  

OSL Board Member David Mayor shares his thoughts in this  video on what OSL
means to him and why it imperative to GiveBig!

Mission Statement: 
To provide dignity, care, and compassion through action, with the example that each person can make a difference.

To educate and advocate acceptance and understanding of each other's differences.

To ultimately bring about the realization that we are all a vital part of this world and with extended effort put an end to homelessness, hunger and hatred.

Spirit Statement:
Nutritional Excellence; a right we are born to, not a privilege we earn…