Lunch available through several Butler locales this summer
Several organizations will work together to provide free food to youths in Butler all summer long.
It’s all happening under the city’s Parks and Plates program, a rebranded version of Butler’s summer food program. The program will supply food to a different city park each day of the week. Food will be distributed by the nonprofit Breakthrough Butler.
Children up to 18 years old can go to a park from 11:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 2 to 4:15 p.m. each weekday from Monday, June 15, to Aug. 14, to receive a bag filled with food and participate in some provided activities while there. Staff from Breakthrough Butler will distribute the food and provide programming at the parks.
Nick Yannotty, founder of Breakthrough Butler, said the program is meant for youths to “get some lunch, positive membership, be part of something.”
“We rebranded with the goal of having better energy, more inviting and welcoming to the community,” Yannotty said. “We’re going to spread it to more people. Kids who are school-age to 18.”
The program will take place at five parks in Butler:
- Rotary Park, on Mondays and Wednesdays
- Father Marinaro Park, on Mondays and Thursdays
- Christie Avenue Playground, on Tuesdays and Thursdays
- Institute Hill Playground, on Tuesdays and Fridays
- Butler Memorial Park, on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Butler Mayor Bob Dandoy said at a city council meeting the food the program is providing is not a simple snack. The meal bags include protein, dairy, fruit, juice and more — enough of a lunch for youths of all ages. The city budgeted $10,000 for the summer program, but some of the cost is subsidized by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which is also providing the meals.
“We’re going to work with them. Lunches will cost about $2,500,” Dandoy said. “And these are not snacks. These are lunches. There will be enough food in the backpack they get to not only have something at the park that day, but to bring it home.”
On Wednesday, June 10, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank delivered 500 bags of food to the Kids’ Weekend Backpack Program, which is another partner in Parks and Plates. The Kids’ Weekend Backpack Program is storing some of the food at Butler Intermediate High School and Yannotty and his staff are distributing it.
Audray Muscatello Yost, a coordinator of the Kids’ Weekend Backpack Program, said the program just agreed to be a steward of Parks and Plates and its volunteers are not helping at the daily distributions at the parks.
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is working with Yost and some volunteers with the Kids’ Weekend Backpack Program to do its own summer food distributions at Emily Brittain Elementary School.
Yost said this is the third year the food bank is providing a week’s worth of meals to youths under 18 at the school.
Last year, it distributed them at Center Avenue Community School as well. It will just take place at Emily Brittain Elementary this summer every Thursday from 10 to 11 a.m., Yost said.
“The first year it was just Emily Brittain, last year it was Emily Brittain and Center Avenue,” Yost said. “We’d feed about 150 children in an hour, five breakfasts and five lunches every Thursday for every child that’s in the program.”
Yost said all a family has to do is provide the first name and last initial of each child and they will receive the week’s worth of meals.
The program is also providing full meals to children, ones aimed at providing sustenance to youths. They are all shelf-stable products, despite none of the items in the meal bags being in cans.
“There’s no canned goods involved in this,” Yost said. “It’s fresh fruit. A lot of things are like hot dogs and tacos and hamburgers and chicken nuggets, and then there’s vegetables and potatoes. The breakfast might be frozen waffles and pancakes and cereal.”
Yost’s group will also place resource sheets inside each of the bags the food bank distributes to further aid people seeking food from the organization.
Yost also credited the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank with keeping youths fed in the summer while the students are not in school where lunch can be provided daily. The Kids’ Weekend Backpack Program fed about 345 children each week in the seven Butler Area School District elementary schools in the 2025-26 school year, also packing that many bags for children to take home each weekend.
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank will fill a void for many children that goes unfilled in the summer while they are out of school, Yost said.
“The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is awesome, they have helped us so much with our program,” Yost said.
Dandoy said the city has provided food for children over the summer for years and the city budgets for the program. This year it is providing $10,000 toward the program, which covers supplies and personnel costs. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is providing $1,000 for the program.
“There’s a lot of opportunities and we’re bringing them together for the city kids,” Dandoy said. “We’re getting services through Breakthrough. We’re getting food through backpack program, which is also being done with the support from the food bank.”
For a schedule of the Parks and Plates food distributions in Butler, visit Breakthrough Butler’s Facebook page.
