As the recession lingers on, food shelters around the Tenderloin find themselves with longer lines as more families and individuals flock to their aid.

On Nov. 2, the San Francisco Food Bank reported a 10 percent increase in food distribution throughout the city and will distribute 36.5 million pounds of food this year, which is enough for over 78,000 meals everyday.

At Glide Memorial Church, a modest dining room is filled with long, rectangular tables each set with ice water, coffee and a big bowl of green apples. Today, the meal is meatballs with gravy on top of a hot dog bun, with sides of cabbage and rice.

Located in the Tenderloin, Glide's Daily Free Meals Program offers around 2,200 daily meals, seven days a week for 364 days a year (except New Year's Day) for people in need.

But the current financial situation has brought more people and it has dramatically affected Glide's operation, according to Bruce McKinney, manager of the Daily Free Meals Program for the last two and a half years. Last February, eight people were laid off while the number of daily meals served grew 18 percent from 2,000 meals during the preceding years.

Most of Glide's patrons are adults, but recently, an influx of families have been seeking help, according to Bobby Furlough, a prep-coordinator in the kitchen.

"In the last eight months we've seen more families around here," Furlough said.

Working-class clients are also known to stop by for breakfast and lunch, as well as volunteers, who take their meals there to save money, he said.

Project Open Hand on Polk Street has also seen an increase on the amount of people who use their service.

Because of the economy's situation, within the last year and a half more people come back and use the services more often, according to Robert Brenneman, director of Development and Marketing at Project Open Hand.

And as the holidays loom closer, concern arises over providing holiday meals due to the faltering economy, said McKinney.

Glide has traditionally served 500 turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

"Last holiday season we were worried, but ended up pretty good," said McKinney about getting all the required turkeys. This Thanksgiving they have secured 300 turkeys and hope to get 200 more.

Glide heavily relies on volunteers' help to serve the community.

"Volunteers are safer here than in the streets, away from drugs," McKinney said.

"When we help people, time goes fast," said Laura B., a volunteer at Glide who would prefer to not use her last name. "I've seen conservatives and bums coming here," she added.

Each person, staff or volunteer, does one activity at a time, like putting salt and pepper onto a food tray, Laura said. Even though the job is pretty mechanical, everybody leaves happy, she said.

Being the recipient of these meals is not an easy position to embrace and some don't see themselves coming to an old Church's dark basement, according to McKinney.

"The last thing people want to do is to stand up and eat at Glide," he said. "Nobody plans on ending up in a place like Glide," and added, "I'm the lucky one to get home."

Ruth Brinker, a retired meal service manager, started the project in 1985 by preparing seven meals in a church basement for people with AIDS. Today, Project Open Hand gives free nutrition services to seniors, men, women and children with HIV, AIDS and breast cancer who live in San Francisco and Oakland.

Open Hand operates seven days a week, 365 days a year. In addition to regular meals they offer seven special meals carefully monitored to follow a special diet that suit their clients' needs. They also make their own peanut butter.

"We serve 2,600 meals a day between San Francisco and Oakland," Brenneman said.

"Our motto is meals with love, nutrition and compassion," Brenneman said. Besides feeding people, "we want to know how they're doing," Brenneman said. Patrons get cakes on their birthdays, some get frozen meals to last a whole week and those who can't leave home because of their critical illness get home delivery services.

In addition to the free meals program, Open Hand offers free grocery service.

The grocery center distributes bags of nutritionally balanced groceries twice a week, on Tuesday and Saturday.

"We try to make the bags with items according to the needs of our clients," Brenneman said.

The bags might contain vegetarian items for diabetic clients or low-calorie goods for both HIV-positive clients and breast cancer patients, or with non-cooking groceries for clients who don't have a kitchen. Furthermore, they offer cooking lessons that fit the available groceries during that week.

For more information visit http://www.glide.org and www.openhand.org.