Photo by Deb Gau Kadence Hyvari, Marshall site coordinator for Lutheran Social Service, prepared an example of a dining tray at the Marshall Adult Community Center on Wednesday. Although LSS has reorganized how it prepares meals, seniors can still get hot meals at the ACC.

MARSHALL — Senior citizens can still get hot meals served at the Adult Community Center in Marshall. However, the number of diners in Marshall has gone down since October.

“We are trying to grow our congregate dining,” Kadence Hyvari, site coordinator for Lutheran Social Service in Marshall, said this week. Hyvari said the number of people who regularly come to the ACC for senior dining has been small since January. At the same time, there are still a good number of meals delivered to local residents through Meels on Wheels.

Changes to senior dining was one of the topics ACC coordinator Katie Brusven talked about during an annual presentation to the Marshall City Council on Tuesday. Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota provides meals for senior dining and Meals on Wheels programs in Marshall, Brusven said.

“They have an on-site option, and then they deliver out in the community, too. They use staff and volunteers to deliver meals to people,” she said.

A chart Brusven shared in her presentation showed that the monthly participation in Meals on Wheels and on-site dining had declined since last fall, when LSS reorganized meal preparation. However, there were still hundreds of meals being delivered from the ACC each month. The chart Brusven shared with city council members showed more than 600 meals delivered in June.

“Some of our attendance has dropped down,” Brusven said. “They typically have had a lower on-site dining number, but then that’s also dropped.”

“Back in October, LSS went through a big format change, and so that’s impacted the dining service,” Brusven told council members.

LSS consolidated the number of kitchens in southwest Minnesota where meals are prepared, she said. After the reorganization, meals for senior dining and Meals on Wheels were no longer cooked in Marshall. Meals are now cooked at the LSS kitchen in Luverne, frozen, and delivered to Marshall.

However, on-site senior dining is still available in Marshall, Hyvari said. Meals delivered by LSS are heated and served daily. After the reorganization, on-site meals have also had more variety, with fresh fruit available more often, desserts, and a bigger variety of entrees in the menu, she said. Hyvari said entrees like sweet and sour chicken have joined the menu plans, along with traditionally popular meals like meatloaf.

“We’ve added so much,” she said. “It’s a really good meal, and you get a good portion.”

Hyvari and Brusven said a question and answer session about senior dining is being planned with LSS later this month. Seniors interested in learning more about the program can come to the ACC at 10 a.m. on July 28.

Brusven said on-site meals are served at the ACC at 11 a.m. To get an accurate count of meals needed, diners should give 24 hours advance notice, she said.

After the LSS reorganization, the ACC did a deep-clean of the kitchen area, and consolidated the LSS’s storage space in Marshall, Brusven said. The ACC is looking at hopefully making the kitchen area available to rent for other uses, she told city council members.

“We’re also looking at what other on-site dining options we have available,” especially for days with a lot of senior activities at the ACC, she said.