BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2026 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — Boca Helping Hands fed 543 people at its Lake Worth Beach distribution site last week. That is roughly 36 percent above the 400 hot meals the site normally puts out, and the organization says the people lining up are increasingly the working poor rather than the chronically homeless.
CEO Andrew Hagen points to shrinking federal food aid. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have lost SNAP benefits in the past year, he said, and the past month’s numbers appear to reflect households falling off the program’s eligibility rolls.
The site was not supposed to get this big. It opened in 2021 at Proclaim Church, a new church plant that Hagen — then a Boca Helping Hands board member and pastor of Advent Lutheran Church in Boca Raton — offered up when the board started talking about expanding into Lake Worth. A handful of volunteers cooked on Saturdays. Demand forced a second night almost immediately.
Kitchen operations are run by Michael Levine, with longtime volunteer Steve Becker serving as the crew’s unofficial anchor, and retired Boca Raton financier Murry Stegelmann has recruited a circle of friends who now form the core of the distribution team.
“We know these people need a little helping hand, and we are happy to lend one,” Stegelmann said.
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Much of what goes out the door is recovered or donated food, subsidized by private donors. Hagen says the meal count is not really the measure that matters. “But I think the bigger thing we offer here is hope,” he said. “People can’t live without it.”
Learn more about Boca Help Hands here.
