With free lunch and breakfast offered to all students in Wareham Schools this year, cafeterias are having difficulty keeping up with the increased demand.

Wareham Schools Food Services Manager Deborah Perry told the School Committee Wednesday that food service employees at all the schools have been working hard to meet the demands of the student body.

"They're making a lot more meals per day," she said. "We're trying. We need [more staff], but not everybody wants to work."

Nearly half of the employees in the food services program retired at the end of last year after the School Committee discussed privatizing the program. That, coupled with the fact that breakfast and lunch is free this year for all students, has resulted in the increased workload.

The free meals are a result of over 40 percent of Wareham’s students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The meals are paid for by a federal grant that is available to communities in which at least 40 percent of the students enrolled are eligible for free or reduced school meals.

Perry said that 51 percent of Wareham students qualified for free or reduced meals for this year. According to income eligibility guidelines for the state of Massachusetts, students coming from family of four, for example, qualify for free lunch if a combined income does not exceed $30,615 per year.

Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Shaver-Hood said in the first two weeks of this school year, 8612 breakfasts were served, and 13,764 lunches were served. Last year, 4,168 breakfasts were served the entire year. Perry said the number of lunches served over the first two weeks this year are 11 percent higher than last year.

School Committee member Rhonda Veugen said she heard concerns that long lunch lines were preventing students from having enough time to eat lunch.

Perry said at the high school, cafeteria workers had gotten students through the lines with "plenty of time to eat."

Mary Cleaver, Food Services manager at Wareham Middle School, said cafeteria workers there are working on fixing the problem.

"Our lines are very long. We're trying to open up more lines and get more personnel there," she said. "We're definitely working on that."

School Committee member Geoff Swett asked Perry if she knows the amount of staff that can be hired while not adversely affecting the budget. Perry replied that she is still working out the numbers.

Swett also said he would like to see a data report in the near future comparing the first few months of the program this year to last year.

"It sounds like it's dramatically different," he said.

"We can't afford a negative surprise like the end of last year," he added, referring to the May report that the food services program lost $20,000 in 2013.

"If you know anybody that would like to work in the cafeteria please have them fill out an application," said Shaver-Hood.