SLO County town’s free Thanksgiving dinner breaks records, serving 1,100 meals
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- Cambria churches and volunteers organized a free Thanksgiving meal, serving 1,144.
- Organizers delivered 144 meals, provided 400 takeouts and 600 dining-room servings.
- Pandemic shifted cooking to restaurants; San Simeon Beach Bar & Grill supplied meals.
Cambria’s free annual holiday meal started 41 years ago as a way for the community to feed less fortunate or lonely people on Thanksgiving.
By 2025, it had evolved into a convivial but still beneficent social event for everybody, with 1,100 free meals provided in that community of about 6,000 residents, according to eight-year volunteer Dave Dignam, now one of the organizers from Cambria Vineyard Church.
“It’s a new record,” Dignam told The Tribune Sunday.
New administrator Kathleen Bracamonte “did a great job,” he said.
A coalition of Vineyard and four other churches led the holiday effort, as usual, with other community members doing their part to help and serve people who need the meal and any who wanted the festive fellowship.
Other congregations involved in the effort were Cambria First Baptist Church, Community Presbyterian Church of Cambria, Santa Rosa Catholic Church and Cambria Calvary Chapel.
Organizers had advertised in advance that they’d be providing 1,000 free meals from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for people to eat at the Veterans Memorial Building, take home or have delivered.
In the end, they provided 1,144, including about 50 or so for staff and volunteers who’d spent their Thanksgiving feeding others he said.
“We delivered 144 meals to people who couldn’t get down to the vets hall. At least 400 meals went out the door for take-out, and more than 600 people came down to eat and socialize in the dining room,” he said.
Sadly, with that volume, they ran out of food about an hour early.
Attendance had been growing for more than 30 years, and then the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in the plans.
Up to then, volunteers had cooked all the food, he said, but “COVID changed everything. We could no longer cook the food for safety reasons.”
With so many volunteers, organizers couldn’t guarantee that each cook was safe, wearing a mask and taking all the necessary precautions.
Still the volunteers persevered in their persistence to provide the holiday meals prepared by restaurants.
This year, for the sixth in a row, “everything was from San Simeon Beach Bar & Grill. (Owner) Miguel Sandoval was there the whole time with his people,” Dignam said. “He’s fantastic.”
Most of the diners said they were pleased and well fed.
Longtime Cambrian Consuelo Macedo had cooked green beans for the event for a decade, but this was her first year being on the other side as a diner.
“I’m so glad that I went. I loved the experience and was happy to sit and visit with so many friends and so many new friends. That was the best part, the congeniality,” she said.
Macedo also lauded the food, which she declared to be “delicious, especially the gravy.” Also, “the pie service was fun,” with table service done by “a person who just did the whipped cream. That tickled my fancy.”
The experience was so wonderful, she said, she put a generous donation in the fundraising jar, as did a lot of other people giving toward next year’s celebration.
Susan Oyler has delivered turkey-day meals almost since the community dinners began.
This year, grandson Cruz Usdiyona (Little Bear) Buhl, 5, went with her.
He’s a Cambria native and attends Cambria Elementary School, according to his mom, Rebecca Buhl.
Later, she posted on Facebook about the experience of helping her son and Oyler deliver the meals.
“We met a lot of very nice people who opened up their homes, told us some stories, and let us pet their cats, dogs and even a chinchilla! Our hearts were full of joy after leaving each house,” she wrote.
The trio delighted in spreading the happiness, Buhl said. “You feel this beautiful connection that wasn’t there before. It feels like a big family tree.”
Oyler agreed.
“It filled my heart to see people smile when Cruz handed them the bags,” she said. “Dinner was one of the highlights, along with the connection to the community. Cambria at its finest.”
Buhl acknowledged that it takes a lot of folks to make it all happen.
“A big thank you to all the wonderful people/family in this little town who came together for this special day,” she said, sending “God’s blessings on you all!”
This story was originally published December 2, 2025 at 11:17 AM with the headline "SLO County town’s free Thanksgiving dinner breaks records, serving 1,100 meals."
