Thirty-three years after the Southern Maine Agency on Aging started delivering a hot Christmas Day dinner to seniors in their homes, the agency will be unable to drop off any this year.

Instead, seniors who have signed up will receive a frozen meal, delivered Friday.

Larry Gross, agency director, said that in September, the organization outsourced its Meals on Wheels food program to the Canteen Service Co., a Maine franchise of the Virginia-based Canteen Vending Services. The agency’s four delivery trucks were also sold to the company, added Gross.

The agency’s food program, before it was outsourced, said Gross, was a huge undertaking.

“We were doing 800 meals a day,” said Gross, for all the towns in York and Cumberland counties. The agency decided to move the Meals on Wheels food preparation and delivery to Canteen in order to focus on other programs.

Meals on Wheels is funded mostly by the federal government, with the rest coming from the state, donations and fundraising. The agency is a private, nonprofit group that oversees a number of programs, including Meals on Wheels, education on Medicare, family caregiver support, advocacy and other services for elders.

Daily, Meals on Wheels provides about 800 meals to seniors all over southern Maine. At Christmas time, seniors on the meal list must request the holiday meal. This year, said Mary Quirion, the agency’s Meals on Wheels coordinator, 75 seniors out of the regular 800 will receive the frozen meal on Friday.

For Westbrook and Gorham combined, three people asked for the meals. In the South Portland area, which includes Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, Meals on Wheels had 10 requests. In Windham, three will receive a frozen Christmas.

During this week, she added, people also donated canned goods for Christmas baskets to be delivered, as well.

Sick drivers, truck problems and calls about missed deliveries were pulling staff away from the agency’s other programs, said Gross. Added to that, said Gross, the recent retirement of key volunteers and the fact that Christmas falls on a Monday made frozen meals the best option.

According Carol Rancourt with the Agency, the food would have to be prepared on Friday, which was too long for unfrozen food to wait until Christmas.

“It’s a food safety issue,” she added. “This is just a one-time glitch. Sometimes when you’re growing, there are growing pains.”

Now that it’s paid staff instead of volunteers cooking the meals, said Quirion, meals for Christmas needed to be prepared the Friday before.

“When you’re working with a new company it’s kind of hard to ask them to come in then,” said Quirion. “It’s a new company we’re dealing with who isn’t used to our ways.”

By next year, said Quirion, the logistics worked out to keep this from happening again. Overall, said both Quirion and Gross, the quality the meals provided by Canteen has been excellent.

Last year, said JoAnn McPhee, a regional coordinator for Meals on Wheels, the program delivered 197,000 meals and covered about 260,000 miles around southern Maine.