Serving at a soup kitchen

Is the idea of serving in a soup kitchen okay? Is it really serving?

From my experience (and I'm sure it holds out) there are often people who have amazing skills serving at a soup kitchen. So there is an accountant or homemaker (or insert other career here) spending there spare time making lots of soup and cutting bread and then serving it to people. People who I would assume are entirely capable of making their own soup and also serving it to themselves.

Essentially soup kitchens are something that we would not like to have. That's my assumption, but I think most people would agree. The people who rely on soup kitchens, I'm sure would like to be doing other things than queueing for soup. Even if it is just eating a meal with friends (as opposed to queueing for it).

The people doing the serving would also like this sort of end game - it would mean that they wouldn't have to help people from a place of compulsion, need or guilt, but a place of spontaneity and because it makes both people in the interaction more human.

Could the volunteers at soup kitchens rather try to change a system that seems to perpetuate the need for soup kitchens? Especially if they could use their skills and experience for that? Could we let people who rely on soup kitchens make their own soup? Teaching someone to fish and all that.

I've just come back from Amsterdam, where I had yet another opportunity to eat at the MKZ, a people's kitchen. The kitchen is squatted, therefore they don't pay rent, and the cooks are volunteers (but volunteers whose skill is cooking - they are really good). The price for a 3 course meal is EUR 5, but if you can't afford that, you don't have to pay. As far as I can tell, nobody enforces this, and you don't need to prove you can't pay. You can eat in a restaurant like setting and nobody really knows who is paying and who isn't. Nor do they care.