The Knoxville Senior Center officially launches its new congregate and home delivery meal service today…a service which is designed to look much like the old one.

For the past few weeks, volunteers and staff at the center in the basement of Knoxville City Hall have been preparing to do their own food service, taking over operations from Marion County after its decision to switch over to a new system for meal service.

The Senior Center has passed its health inspection, kept a significant amount of cooking equipment once owned by Marion County, and lined up the staff and volunteers necessary to make the transition.

Mike Roberts is chair for the Senior Center Board; he tells KNIA/KRLS News their clients made it clear at an open meeting a few months ago they wanted to keep their food service the same.

“This basement was full of people with concerns on the changeover, and we’ve seen what they wanted and they wanted to keep it the way it was. So when I got on the board and eventually became president, we put the plan together to make this happen and try to have little change on what was going on with the meal program. I think we’ve succeeded with this,” Roberts says.

The center is getting help from Aging Resources, which has provided a grant covering twenty-five percent of the cost of meals; they will also be staging bingo games twice a month, with proceeds going to help support their efforts.

For more on the Knoxville Senior Center’s meal service plan, tune in to today’s edition of Let’s Talk Knoxville.