FeedRI Is Setting a Bigger Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving gets complicated when the holiday assumes everyone has a table waiting for them. FeedRI’s answer is to make room for more people, returning to Farm Fresh RI on November 26 for its third annual Friendsgiving with a traditional meal and a place to spend the holiday in company.

Providence-based Easy Entertaining will once again handle the kitchen, where chefs Ashley Vansasse and Andre Lopez will work alongside volunteers to prepare Thanksgiving favorites for guests. The meal is part of a broader community effort, with support coming from Rhode Island businesses and organizations including Quality Food Company of West Warwick, Johnson & Wales University, Resmini Law, and local restaurants and retailers.

For Easy Entertaining owner Katie Roberts, the day extends a familiar idea of hospitality beyond catered parties and events.

“Thanksgiving is about bringing people together, and food has an incredible way of creating that connection,” Roberts says. “Being part of Friendsgiving is especially meaningful to our team because we believe hospitality extends far beyond the events we cater.”

Wright’s Dairy Farm & Bakery has taken on another important assignment, supplying freshly baked pies for the Thanksgiving table. It’s a small detail in a much larger effort, but also the sort that makes a community meal feel more like the holiday itself. Thanksgiving without pie would be asking quite a lot.

Friendsgiving also looks beyond dinner. Each guest will leave Farm Fresh RI with a FeedRI gift bag containing winter essentials such as hats and gloves, along with snacks, extending the support into the colder days that follow.

Now in its third year, the gathering brings FeedRI’s work around hunger and food insecurity into one room, but the meal addresses something food alone can’t solve. Holidays can make an empty seat, or the absence of a table altogether, feel especially noticeable, which is why Friendsgiving pairs a warm dinner with the simple opportunity to eat it alongside other people.

That takes a lot of hands, from the chefs cooking and volunteers serving to local businesses contributing what they can. By Thanksgiving afternoon, those individual pieces add up to something straightforward but meaningful, a table with room for more Rhode Islanders. For more information about FeedRI’s third annual Friendsgiving, contact rosanna@rmopr.com.