By 5, more than two hours before the doors open, the lineup for dinner has already started. Two men sit on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall, one with his possessions in a cart beside him. It's a warm, sunny evening in late summer. In winter, "Some come in soaking wet, just in windbreakers and T-shirts," says Dotty Kanke, a volunteer in the kitchen and dining hall at the Union Gospel Mission (616 East Cordova Street). Feeding people is something they do a lot of here. Chef Randy Spark makes a Sunday brunch for residents, plus a sit-down lunch and dinner for guests every day, which is offered 365 days a year. Nobody is ever turned away and, while numbers fluctuate–Welfare Wednesdays are usually low–factoring in those delivered to the mission's drop-in facilities for women and youth, the average total count is 750 meals a day.

Kitchen staff are paid, and dishwashers are drawn from the 34 residents in the mission's four-month recovery program; the rest is handled by volunteers. Kanke has shown up every Monday since the start of the year. Tonight, she's there with husband Bud Kanke, also a regular volunteer and owner of Goldfish Pacific Kitchen and Joe Fortes restaurant (where a busy night averages 450 meals). All gleaming stainless-steel counters and utensils hung on overhead racks, the mission's kitchen is a ringer for any big, commercial facility's, and it has all the accoutrements too, including a cold room and a walk-in fridge, but there are inadequacies. Last year, the mission served well over a quarter of a million meals. Constructed in 1982, the kitchen was built to handle only 100 meals a day. So kicking off with a six-figure donation from her husband, Dotty's self-assigned goal is to raise half a million dollars to fund the kitchen in a nearby new building already in the planning stages. "The first night I was here, I saw the problems," she says, and she's upfront that she intends to "hit up [other] restaurateurs to get deals". Day to day, she collects funds as needs arise for necessities that can't wait, like replacing a toilet or fixing a backed-up sink. In addition, she wants to get her hands on another half-million to purchase space beside the existing mission to accommodate freezers: "They get lots of food donations, and they turn so much food away because there's no freezer space."

Having a pantry to draw on is key. "We generally order most of the protein," says Spark, who has worked in restaurants for more than 20 years. "Then you use what comes in the back door." He has 13 staff members including a driver and a "swamper" who pick up larger donations. Food can come from companies like Starbucks and Safeway, or from a food-catalogue photo shoot. On the counter in the kitchen is a carton of fresh beets from a freight company, part of a four-pallet donation of mixed vegetables.

There's time for a look around before we start making dinner for tonight's guests. (Staff and residents eat earlier.) In her eight months of volunteering, Dotty says she has learned about life on the streets. The faceless of the Downtown Eastside are now people she knows. They've washed dishes together, and "They know your name." Before dinner, people outside are led into the chapel for prayers, in which the prevailing message is hope. It's late afternoon, and stack-a-bunks are piled at one side of the chapel ready for the night. The new facility will have showers and will sleep more people.

Staff and volunteers notice more kids coming to the mission for food these days. (The youngest guest to date was a 13-month-old baby.) Residents in the recovery program get passes to community centres, gyms, and pools, as well as the option of computer training and the opportunity to finish high school and gain a Grade 12 equivalency. Beyond the dining room is an outdoor area, with a gazebo identified as Jimmy's Place that was funded by the will of someone helped by the recovery program. Birds, wind in the trees, planters, and a small waterfall make it a little oasis.

Around 6:30 p.m., back in the dining room, 10 tables, each with 10 stools, are set up. Dotty drags a plastic sack of baked goods out from the kitchen. Old bagels are too hard for many diners' teeth, "and we don't use anything that's broken" or mushed or squashed, as can happen when muffins or squares are piled one on top of another. All go directly onto the tables, two by two in a long central line. Beverages, plastic forks, napkins–all that's missing now is dinner. Tonight, it's meatballs, bought frozen and reheated in gravy, with potatoes and salad.

Volunteers often do the prep for future meals. Back in the kitchen, Bud slices tomatoes into a bowl as big across as a truck tire. I top and tail a case of beets. "If you get too hot," says Dotty, "go step in the freezer or the fridge." She's serious. Next, volunteer Judy McLean, Dotty, and I make our way through a 23-kilogram bag of carrots that, with 23 kilograms of onions, will be the foundation for a soup or stew. Peelings go in the bin, carrots in a bucket to be covered with water to keep them fresh. Says McLean, whose day job is professor of food nutrition and health at UBC: "They've got variety [here]. I'm impressed by what they're managing to put together."

We finish the carrots. "The cauliflower needs to be cut up," says Dotty, indicating a case on the counter. So we do. (At some point, the radio strikes up John Lennon's "Imagine"–"Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can…", an ironic anthem for those in what is now a long lineup.) There's always something for volunteers to do. In the pantry, Bud cleans shelves that hold four-litre containers of oyster sauce, soy sauce, and syrup. Charities take what they can get, which explains the anomaly of cans of Wolfgang Puck's organic soup and Safeway-brand baked beans side by side.

In terms of tonight's chores, I'm lucky: the hard part's already done. "Most [restaurant] kitchens have automated potato peelers," says Dotty. "Here, it's all done by hand." Earlier today, staff cut red potatoes into wedges, cooked them with strips of red and yellow pepper, sprinkled them with parsley, and parbaked them in four big pans, to be reheated close to serving time. Someone confirms the time to open the doors: 7:25 p.m.

It's almost that now. Left to right on the counter that separates kitchen and dining area are an assembly line of four metal containers of food and stacks of plates, 100 in total. McLean puts four meatballs on a plate. Standing beside her, I do the same, soon getting into the rhythm. Scoop up a spoonful of meatballs. Quick count, shimmy the spoon so extras fall back in the pan, tip them onto the plate, sliding it to the left as you do so, for servings of potatoes and salad. And…repeat. On the other side of the counter, residents line up to take the plates as they're ready, and set them out onto the tables.

As the guys (and it's almost entirely guys) come in, Dotty directs them to tables. All ages are here, and most ethnicities. Hair to the waist, shaved heads. Baseball caps. Jeans, shorts. They sit down and eat, single-mindedly. There's little or no conversation. This is a fuelling stop, nothing more, and where diners usually linger over a meal, here people are in and out in 15 minutes. Tucking their allotment of bread and pastry into a bag to take away, some cut their stay down to five minutes. Then, cleanup. "They come up with the plate, dump it, you scrape it here," instructs Dotty. Leavings go into the bin, the plate gets put into a bowl of water. Inside the kitchen Matt Russell, a resident in his mid 20s, works at admirable speed, rinsing plates, sliding them into an automatic dishwasher, setting them to dry.

Once the crowd has thinned to a very few, volunteers clean the tabletops and, if food has landed on them, the seats, with bleach and water. Uneaten food is thrown out. "You're from the Georgia Straight? I'm from the London Times," says a guest, "Eric Vernon Ignatius Joseph Boistow Esquire Junior… Want to see my tattoo?"

Immediately we start on the next sitting, counting out baked goods, setting the tables, serving the food, clearing up. It's now around 8:30. The Kankes wipe down the tables with bleach solution before folding and stacking them. In the chapel, the seating has been replaced by bunks with a sheet, blanket, mat, and pillow on each.

It happened last night, and the night before that. And it will happen again tonight.

The Union Gospel Mission can always use donations of food, time, or money. Call 604-253-3323 or see www.ugm.ca/