ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Scooping jellied cranberry sauce into single serving pods is the task du jour for 6-year-old Ella Coleman.

What You Need To Know

  • U.S. Marine Veteran owner of Bayboro Brewing gathered friends and family to make Thanksgiving meals 
  • He made 200 meals for recently homed Pinellas County Veterans 

  •  Barbacoa Boyz Barbeque pitched in to help double the meals from 2022

  • Fellow veterans pitched in from Renzo's St. Pete and Crossfit 9

The black kitchen gloves outsize her first-grade hands as she sits in Bayboro Brewing.

“I’m making cranberry sauce for the veterans,” Coleman explained while scooping.

Coleman is the child of a U.S. Marine Veteran, and she’s here to help people just like her dad.

“It feels good to share with other people, making the food for them,” she said.’

“It’s great to see the community come together,” said dad James Coleman. “There are still people rallying around each other, helping the community, taking care of each other, that’s what it’s all about.”

Coleman says new volunteers like Jayson Austin of the Barbacoa Boyz Barbeque meant they could serve 200 thanksgiving meals, effectively doubling their output from last year.

“I appreciate everything the men in the armed services do for me and my family and my community,” said Austin. “So I think this a great way for me to give back to them.”

Chef Bill Tarleton doesn’t even work at Bayboro anymore. He’s at Renzo’s in downtown St. Pete. But he’s a Marine, an 11-year combat veteran.

“And so here I am again, and yet also somehow still in charge,” Tarleton said, laughing. “But you know this is something important to me, near and dear to my heart.”

Tarleton knows how hard it can be to transition back to civilian life.

“Having served your country and having given so much and not being able to feed yourself and not being able to home yourself, that’s really disturbing. That’s hard to swallow,” Tarleton said. “I don’t know that I’m making a significant impact on somebody’s life here today. It’s what we can do- and I hope somebody gets a little bit of joy out of this.”

For the volunteers here, it’s about more than food. It’s about love and gratitude and telling people they are not forgotten.