Friendship Inn expands services for first time in their history to meet growing need

In order to meet the growing need in Saskatoon, the Friendship Inn is expanding their mealtime services for the first time in their 58 year history.

A community centre in the Riversdale neighbourhood in Saskatoon, the Friendship Inn serves hot meals to vulnerable individuals, 365 days a year. Typically, they have served a one-hour meal for breakfast, which has been extended to 90 minutes. Lunch has also been extended by another half-hour.

“The motivation behind that is simply to serve the community in whatever way we can, and just expand so that we can manage the need that we feel is coming through our doors,” said Friendship Inn CEO Sandra Kary.

According to Kary, as is common with community soup kitchens, mealtimes have meant sizeable lineups of individuals outside, waiting to receive a hot meal.

“We are cognizant that when we head into the colder months, we don’t want to leave people outside waiting if we can help it. So this is a timely opportunity to take some pressure off the team,” said Kary.

“We want to make sure we’re getting people out from the cold as quickly as possible.”

The expansion of dinner service comes shortly after the Friendship Inn started offering supper-time meals for the first time in their history. Starting this past July, the centre has offered dinners on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings from 4:00-5:00PM.

On a given day, the Friendship Inn provides about 1,500 to 1,800 meals to individuals in Saskatoon. In their last year, from June 2025 to June 2026, they provided a total of 554,000 meals – a 20 percent increase from the previous year.

Of the individuals they see through their doors, Kary said Indigenous people are over-represented in those they see experiencing poverty.

“There’s a lot of people that have been struggling in the past few years. It has everything to do with how expensive food is and how inflation is hitting everyone,” said Kary.

According to a provincial government report, year-over-year grocery inflation in Saskatchewan was 4.8 percent as of July 2026, compared to the national average of 3.1 percent. Overall inflation rate stood at 4.1 percent in the province, compared to 3.0 percent for Canada as whole.

“We see a lot more people falling through the cracks and falling into being unhoused or just struggling to find consistent housing,” said Kary.

“We see folks from every walk of life (in the Friendship Inn). We see moms with kids, we see grandparents with kids, we see people that are working, we see elderly and people on a pension. It’s a real cross-section of folks who come through our doors.”

As the Friendship Inn relies heavily on donations – with about 95 percent of their food and finances coming from donations, Kary said they want to be good stewards of the community generosity and do whatever they can to serve those in need.

“Being able to extend our mealtime services wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of the community,” said Kary.

“It’s hard to see people in their deepest struggle, coming in and looking for warmth, support, a meal, and some compassion.”