Right on Cue
Six Hundred Acts of Service
By Jeff Fraga
PHOTOS BY DINAH SATTERWHITE
In the early morning mist of Eagle Harbor, before the first ferry horn signals the start of the island’s commute, a single light often glows in the commercial kitchen of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church.
Inside—the air thick with the scent of simmering stocks and roasted vegetables—Tim Shelly and Kari Butterfield are busy preparing a lifeline for hundreds of their neighbors.
The pair are the quiet engine behind one of Bainbridge’s most vital food security programs, Food Bridge, preparing approximately 600 fresh meals each week for those in need. Their reach extends across the island’s support networks (and beyond), including Helpline House, the Senior Center, Island Volunteer Caregivers (IVC) and Arms Around Bainbridge (AAB).
Shelly said that he and Butterfield’s partnership converged from different paths. “Kari worked in catering and has five kids, so she’s a professional cook mom,” he said. “I’m classically trained. I went to Le Cordon Bleu in Portland then through the restaurant world. I had opened 20 restaurants in my career, and then I took a little hiatus, being a stay-at-home dad for a while. But the food world is my passion.”
The logistics of what they accomplish are staggering. They work seven days a week, planning menus, sourcing ingredients from local growers, shopping, prepping and cooking. By July 2025, the collaboration with AAB alone had resulted in more than 4,000 meals delivered to families facing medical crises.
Shelly had already been cooking for Arms Around Bainbridge and Island Volunteer Caregivers’ meal delivery programs when he got a call from Maria Metzler, executive director of Helpline House.
“What we do with Helpline is two different things,” explained Shelly. “We do a senior soup and sandwich program once a week, and they get a pint of soup and a sandwich which changes every week.” Additionally, he said, Food Bridge has now begun preparing frozen meals for the organization.
“We do a lot. For example, we just got 90 pounds of Andouille sausage in 5-pound bags donated from Town & Country Markets. And we’re tasked with turning them into ready-to-eat meals. A Cajun chili was one of the recipes we made and we made 180 pints.”
And these aren’t just generic calories, said Shelly. They are curated, health-conscious and deeply personal offerings. “We believe that everybody deserves to have really, really good food,” he said. “The food that we make is not secondhand. It hasn’t been turned away by a restaurant or anything like that.”
Shelly views their labor as a natural extension of being a neighbor.
“The reason that we can work seven days a week is because of the passion that we have,” said Shelly. “We only want to grow this business and help. The more we can help, the better it is all around.”
