Photo provided Senior Services of Belmont County employees prepare meals recently for the 1,100 county seniors who receive food daily. The agency kitchen will soon undergo a small remodel with the purchase of additional equipment to meet the expanding demand for daily meals during the pandemic.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County Senior Services is upgrading its kitchen to meet a rise in demand for daily meal delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Belmont County Senior Services Director Dwayne Pielech described the additions as a “tweak.” He pointed out the assembly-line configuration of the kitchen, where staff members work wearing protective gear. The staffers also remain carefully separated to ensure social distancing.

“We have a lot of seniors that depend on our services. We cannot risk bringing that virus, so that’s why we try to keep our staff as safe and as distanced as possible,” Pielech said. “We don’t want to lose any down time. If we close a day, that’s 1,100 meals that somebody’s depending on us.”

Meals are prepared and loaded for delivery on 10 meal routes.

The kitchen facilities have had continuous use since 2017, when the headquarters building along U.S. 40 west of St. Clairsville was completed and Senior Services of Belmont County moved in.

“We just had our third anniversary,” Pielech said, recalling the move from an outdated kitchen facility in the old headquarters.

However, Pielech said the kitchen originally was designed to turn out 800-900 meals daily. More recently, the demand for meals has increased, with staff now preparing close to 1,100 meals a day. The COVID-19 pandemic has motivated much of the change, but Pielech said he does not expect this demand to lessen. Instead, he believes the need for meal deliveries will increase as more Belmont County senior citizens become used to this service rather than eating at the still-closed senior centers.

Pielech said the renovation plan includes adding a new, upright self-cleaning omni-oven to join the four current ovens. The major expenses will be the new oven, costing about $30,000, and a second prep sink, fans and a monitor or training sessions at a cost of a few thousand dollars more.

The cost of the original kitchen facility and equipment was about $1.5 million of the building’s total price tag of about $6 million.

Pielech said all of the meals are prepared by 9 a.m. every morning, and work then begins on the next day’s meals.

“Because of the great increase in the number of consumers using our meals, we’re going to make this kitchen even more efficient,” Pielech said.

He added that the additions were scheduled for this year, since next year an unnecessary half-mill levy will have expired.

“We had allocated this earlier this year, specifically knowing that we were probably going to have to do this. So we are going to have this paid for,” he said. “So it’s not an expense out of next year’s budget, when we have less tax levy dollars.”

Due to high demand, the county is also seeking bids for new Senior Services vehicles, including two new heated nutrition trucks for meal delivery. Pielech said the department also may establish an 11th delivery route.

“You get to the point where the route’s so saturated … with the volume of meals,” Pielech said.