A New Dining Room for the New Century

St. Anthony Foundation is a civic anchor serving generations of San Franciscans who faced personal challenges by offering a warm meal served with dignity, respect and hope.

Building a New St. Anthony's Dining Room from the Ground Up

St. Anthony's is preparing to build a new dining room at 121 Golden Gate Avenue, the site of our current dining room, which has been operating there for more than sixty years. This structure, built in the early 1900s, will be replaced with a brand new ten-story building. St. Anthony's Dining Room will be on the first floor, and two other St. Anthony's programs, the Social Work Center and the Free Clothing Program, will be located on the second floor of the new building. Mercy Housing California is partnering with us to build 90 units of affordable senior housing on the upper floors.

San Francisco needs St. Anthony's Dining Room

St. Anthony's serves at least 40% of all free meals served in San Francisco each day. It is the only free food program in San Francisco open every day of the year. We serve as many as 3,000 meals per day to a wide variety of our city neighbors and residents, including:

• Seniors trying to live on Social Security in one of the most expensive cities in the country;
• Veterans of war whose ability to work is compromised by age, illness, or war-related injury or trauma;
• Families living in studios with parents working two and three jobs, none of which provide health insurance;
• People with physical disabilities, 70% of whom, nationwide, live below the poverty line;
• The chronically homeless, the working poor, and neighbors in short-term transition or crisis.

It's time to build a new St. Anthony's Dining Room

The current St. Anthony's Dining Room is deeply inadequate. Originally designed 60 years ago to serve 400 meals, it is today serving almost 8 times that number every day of the year - nearly one million meals a year. While the need increases, the building and equipment get older. Old equipment and an obsolete building design slow down service. Furthermore, the building is not up to seismic standards.

In our new upgraded urban campus, the new Dining Room will provide a gateway to other key services, raising more of our neighbors out of poverty and desperation.

Guests will be able to easily access the Free Clothing Program and the Social Work Center upstairs from the Dining Room, or the Tenderloin Tech Lab and Free Medical Clinic across the street at 150 Golden Gate Avenue.

How YOU Can Help

We need to raise $15 million to build a new St. Anthony’s Dining Room.

YOU can play a role in helping to build a new dining room for the new century by making a gift, introducing potential new supporters to the project, or raising awareness of this project among others in the community. Together, we can make this vision a reality for San Francisco.

To learn more, schedule a tour of the Dining Room, or find out how you can get involved, please contact Barry Stenger at bstenger@stanthonysf.org or (415) 592-2735.