Metuchen Empty Bowls: First Presbyterian Church Food Pantry Fundraiser

Guests choose a handcrafted ceramic bowl, enjoy soup, salad & bread, and keep the bowl as a reminder of hunger. Local art for sale! “METUCHEN EMPTY BOWLS” Local Artists Come Together to Help Feed Those in Need A group of artists is joining together to create an art event that will feed the soul and, literally, feed the body too. Artists from Lore Ceramics, Earthsongs Studio, Basecamp Studio & Gallery, Rising Heart Studio and Friends of Metuchen Arts will hold a “Metuchen Empty Bowls” fundraiser to benefit the First Presbyterian Church Community Food Pantry on Saturday, October 10, 2026 between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. in the Church’s social hall located at 270 Woodbridge Avenue in Metuchen. The event will feature the church’s famous soup meal complete with salad, bread, and dessert, plus each attendee will receive a handmade ceramic bowl created especially for the event by local ceramic artists. There will be live music and an art fair with an opportunity to purchase additional art from local artisans. Organizer Robert Diken of Basecamp Studio & Gallery, a ceramic artist himself, explains: “Empty Bowls is a grassroots movement where artists raise money for hunger-relief charities. The simple concept is: potters make bowls, restaurants donate soup, and the community shows up. As a ceramic artist, I jumped at the chance to give back through my practice, partnering with fellow artists and studios who share that spirit. For the Metuchen Empty Bowls Project, the First Presbyterian Food Pantry supplies the soup — making them both a partner and the recipient of every dollar raised.” All proceeds from the Empty Bowls dinner go directly to the FPC Food Pantry. Tickets to The Empty Bowls Project are $50; children under age 12 are free. “The goal of the FPC Food Pantry is to make sure no one in our area ever goes to bed hungry,” said FPC Food Pantry Director Sarah Teti. “Achieving this would not be possible without the financial partnership of members of the community and the hard work of our dedicated volunteers who come from every corner of the community.” A little history of the FPC Pantry: The PFC Food Pantry was started at the church in a closet in the boiler room of the First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen’s social hall thirty years ago. In 2017, the church hired Sarah Teti to reconfigure the pantry into a client choice pantry, turning it into a free store for local residents to come in and get some groceries for free. During the pandemic, clients were not permitted to enter the building, so the pantry operated as a drive-up for not only local residents in need, but for any person looking for food, any agency that serves a low-income population, and case workers from Rutgers UBHC who do homeless outreach. By the time the food pantry reopened for shopping, the relationships built during those tough pandemic months turned the FPC Food Pantry into a food distribution hub. In 2023, the Pantry was awarded a $250,000 CDBG-CV grant from Middlesex County to build an extension onto the church’s Social Center to house the Pantry. The new Pantry opened in 2025 and now serves 150-plus families, which is about 600 people a month. In addition, there are 60 home deliveries, 30 agency client bags and over 1,000 microwavable meals supplied by Elijah’s Promise and the Share My Meals program distributed through the Pantry to local agencies, low-income housing units, homeless outreach, and after-school programs each month.