Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Kathleen Harter, director of Copper Shores Meals on Wheels, brings the first chest of food from Rock Harbor Lodge’s donation to be taken back to the Meals on Wheels main kitchen in Hancock.

HOUGHTON — They never know what it will be, only that it will help.

As the Ranger III was unloaded shortly after docking Thursday afternoon, representatives from the Copper Shores Meals on Wheels stood by for a highly anticipated gift: the annual donation of surplus flood from the Rock Harbor Lodge.

The tradition began around 15 years ago, said Meals on Wheels Director Kathleen Harter.

The lodge is part of Aramark Operations, which runs concessions on the island. At the end of each season on the island, they donate the unused frozen and dry food they haven’t used.

“So we get everything from pesto sauce to spaghetti to bean burgers, all kinds of things that we find ways to incorporate in our menus that we provide to the seniors then,” she said.

Starting around July, Meals on Wheels starts preparing and clearing out freezer space for what might eventually come. Concessions were busier than ever this year, forcing the company to try to anticipate how much food visitors would need. That usually means some level of food left over.

Harter had been told to expect about two chest freezers full of goods, along with a cart.

“With the increase in food costs that we’ve been having, that everybody has been experiencing, any kind of a donation like that of quality food is awesome,” she said. “And we put it right back into serving it for seniors.”

About 300 seniors get their meals from the program each day.

How much food there is dictates how it gets used.

Some ingredients might go into a full meal. Others might become part of a frozen meal, which gets delivered to about a third of seniors on weekends. Others might go to a congregate site for a small meal there, or be added as an extra ingredient or side dish.

Last year, they got large quantities of many of the foods, so a lot of them ended up in meals, said head cook Corinne Cortez.

“The pesto was really fun last year,” Harter said. “We don’t usually serve pesto; that’s a pretty expensive item, right?” But we did pesto chicken pasta sauce and the seniors really loved it.”

While the Meals on Wheels staff have a rough idea how much food is coming, they don’t know what it will be until they open up the chests and start loading things in the truck.

And with the occasional unlabeled boxes, not even then.

“It’s definitely a fun surprise,” Harter said. “It literally is like Christmas for the next couple of months, just opening up and seeing what’s there.”

After wheeling the chests over to a truck, they quickly began filling the truck bed with boxes. Those were taken back to Hancock and quickly stashed in the freezer to be sorted out later.

The boxes promised Atlantic cod, gourmet desserts, and chipotle black bean burgers, among other treats.

“Chipotle and black bean — that’s going to be yum,” Cortez said.

Thursday’s delivery turned out to be the biggest one yet, Harter said the next day. Based on early estimates, it will be enough for thousands of meals, plus some side dishes.