Diners enjoy hot soup and sandwiches together at The People’s Bowl in the War Memorial Building on Friday night. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The People’s Bowl filled the War Memorial Building’s ballroom with food and community togetherness on Thursday and Friday night, thanks to the efforts of the Shepherdstown Community Club, Shepherdstown Shares and Shepherd University Dining Services.

The three organizations collaborated together to create an event with free dinner and live music, using the funds that remained from a grant awarded to the Shepherdstown Shares Food Pantry by Aramark, which is in charge of the Shepherd University Dining Services. The majority of the grant funding was used to make some much-needed updates to the food pantry, including replacing one of its chest freezers with a commercial model.

For The People’s Bowl, Aramark provided an assortment of sandwiches and wraps, chips, apples, cookies, cotton candy, iced tea and lemonade for diners to enjoy. To complete the meal, a wide variety of soup was also available at the event, thanks to six local restaurants — Alma Bea, Blue Moon Cafe, Rumsey Tavern, the Bavarian Inn, MJ’s on German DeliCafe and Bistro 112 — who donated their soup to Shepherdstown Shares for the event.

“The intention behind The People’s Bowl was to give a ‘thank you’ to the community and an opportunity for pantry clients and our wider community to come share the same event,” said The People’s Bowl organizer John Meeker. “I just want to thank Aramark for providing us with all of these wonderful boxed lunches. We also want to thank the Shepherdstown Community Club for always being here and for always giving us a spot to gather. We were just talking yesterday about the number of different events we’ve been at here, over the years.”

The Shepherdstown Community Club donated the use of the War Memorial Building’s ballroom for the two evenings of The People’s Bowl and, on top of that, also provided the event with a number of volunteers. Aramark was more directly involved on the first day of The People’s Bowl, with that evening being heavily staffed by Aramark employees, who were fulfilling their work requirements to participate in Aramark’s global day of service, Aramark Building Community Day on May 2.

From left to right, Doc McCluskey, Marty Amerikaner, Tim Jacot and Michael Janney serenade the diners at The People's Bowl in the War Memorial Building on Friday. Tabitha Johnston

The decision to extend the dinner from Aramark’s intended one-day event, to a two-day event, was easily made when the Shepherdstown Shares board noticed that their donations could provide for twice as many diners as were anticipated to attend on May 2.

“We felt we had enough food to do it for two nights,” Meeker said. “It’s already a big weekend, with graduation and proms and May Day, so we decided to go for it!”

A total of 100 people dined at The People’s Bowl on the first night, while the second night’s attendance was more in line with the anticipated amount of 75. Although attendees were welcome to take dinner and leave, many chose to stay in the ballroom and enjoy their dinners together, while being serenaded by the Shepherdstown Shares Garage Band, featuring local musicians Doc McCluskey, Marty Amerikaner, Tim Jacot and Michael Janney.

As the second night of The People’s Bowl came to a close, Meeker noted he hopes it will become an annual event, with the continued support of Shepherd University Dining Services again next year. The desire to continue to hold this event again next year was shared by the Shepherdstown Community Club, according to the club’s property manager, Jenny Haynes.

“We’re all in it together,” Haynes said. “Shepherdstown Shares reached out to us with this great idea. Sometimes, it takes a couple different organizations to create an event and make it happen! At the end of the day, we really are all doing the same thing — taking care of our community in different ways. It make sense for us to work together, rather than accidentally working against each other.”

Shepherdstown resident Jim Gatz takes an order for soup from a hungry diner in the War Memorial Building on Friday night. Tabitha Johnston

The People’s Bowl was held in conjunction with the start of the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, a charitable effort run by Shepherdstown Shares and the Shepherdstown Post Office.