DC Central Kitchen

DC Central Kitchen is a nationally recognized "community kitchen" that recycles food from around Washington DC and uses it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop valuable work skills while providing thousands of meals for local service agencies in the process.

History

DC Central Kitchen was founded in 1989 by Robert Egger. Egger was working in the bar/nightclub scene in DC (he continues to say that his dream is to open the "world's best nightclub") when he and his wife were guilted into volunteering with a church group that bought food to prepare and distribute from the back of a van. The experience was an epiphany for Egger, who drew several conclusions:

• Having worked in the nightclub/foodservice industry he knew that excess food could be recycled instead of purchased by nonprofit groups.
• The food industry had a range of jobs that needed to be filled, and the community had a large number of underemployed individuals who could be trained to fill them.
• The people in line for the handouts were almost set up to come back the next night. There were no other services connected to the meal. This caused him to question who was being served: the recipients of the food, or the volunteers (with their need to feel good about themselves).
• Food could be used for more than meeting the immediate needs of the hungry. It could be used as a tool to train culinary skills and as a means for outreach to connect people on the street with services that they needed
• In short, the community was not leveraging its resources effectively to create change.

Egger approached several groups with his ideas but says he was consistently met with resistance. He says some protested that restaurants would not donate for liability reasons, while some simply said that the homeless could not be trained for jobs. Egger has said that this resistance to change by those in the non-profit community flabbergasted him. He did some research and found that food donors are in fact, protected by law. He was particularly angered by the thought that non-profits would simply let people's lives go to waste without trying to train them for something better. Still, no one would listen.

Egger finally decided to start his own non-profit, and thus DC Central Kitchen was born. Its first major food recovery was from the 1989 inaugural party for President George H.W. Bush.

Programs

• Culinary Job Training
• Food Recycling
• Meal Distribution
• First Helping
• Fresh Start Catering
• Healthy Returns
• Campus Kitchens Project

Culinary Job Training

DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) believes that solving the immediate problem of hunger is only fighting half of the battle. That's why, in addition to the food recovery and distribution program, DCCK addresses the root causes of hunger with its Culinary Arts Job Training program, which began in 1990. The ultimate goal of the program is to prepare unemployed and homeless adults for careers in the food service industry.

The preparation operations that occur at the Kitchen each day provide an ideal environment for teaching basic entry-level culinary skills.

The 12-week training course follows a curriculum designed by DCCK's own training staff and includes all facets of entry-level work in a professional kitchen. The program includes "hands-on" training instructed by staff chefs, while visiting chefs volunteer to provide ongoing training seminars that teach specific skills in the culinary arts. The training and employment staff teach the importance of job-readiness skills such as punctuality, following directions, positive work attitude, and teamwork. Individual and group sessions provide life skills training to further students' personal growth. Human resource volunteers present seminars on such skills as job-search strategies, interview techniques and resume writing, among others.

In addition, all graduates of the Kitchen's training program complete the ServSafe course, a nationally recognized food handlers certification course from the Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association.

Food Recycling

In 2005, DC Central Kitchen recovered 1.4 million pounds of food, and distributed approximately 1.2 million meals to its partner agencies in the DC Metropolitan area.

DCCK drivers, trained in food sanitation and DCCK's established policies on acceptable donations, use health-code approved transportation and sanitized containers to rescue prepared and perishable surplus food from hundreds of restaurants, hotels, university cafeterias, caterers, and other concerned businesses in the D.C. area. Between one and two tons of food are recovered every day.

DCCK regularly initiates new partnerships to strengthen the program's long-term ability to secure food. Such projects include partnerships with Pizza Hut & KFC, that provide support through their Harvest Program, Panera Bread Company through their Operation Dough-Nation, and the Fresh Farm Markets, who ensure that surplus fresh produce from DC farmer’s markets goes to feed and empower DC residents.

Meal Distribution

DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) provides prepared meals and snacks to partner agencies in the Washington metropolitan area. Their partners are nonprofit human service organizations, providing meaningful social services to people who are low-income or homeless. DCCK prepares an average of 4,000 meals per day, 365 days per year, for distribution to approximately 100 agencies. Partners include emergency shelters, transitional homes, substance abuse treatment programs, adult education and job training programs, community and youth centers, children's after-school programs and senior citizen programs.

As a result of DCCK’s efforts, partner agencies are able to redirect resources toward their stated missions and to the delivery of direct client services, rather than spending the money on food and food preparation. For many partner agencies, this means increased and improved participation as well as additional programming. In this way, DC Central Kitchen attempts to increase the effectiveness of the non-profit system in the DC metro area.

In addition to providing meals to hungry men, women, and children in the community, the Meal Distribution Program also acts to provide long-term solutions to hunger. By acting as the "classroom" for the DC Central Kitchen’s Culinary Job Training program, the Kitchen allows men and women the chance to not only gain valuable skills that will get them the jobs they need, but to do something positive for their community as well.

First Helping

A street-level outreach project of DC Central Kitchen (DCCK), First Helping was born out of DCCK’s response to the Washington Blizzard of 1996. DCCK began a daily delivery of hot soup and sandwiches for the homeless men and women stranded by the storms in emergency shelters. After receiving some initial funding, DCCK was able to expand on this important work in the fall of that year by starting First Helping.

First Helping provides full and nutritional breakfasts to individuals living on the streets and in emergency shelters in every quadrant of the District. The project has steadily provided 570 meals per day to these individuals. In providing this service, the project builds relationships and helps these individuals move off the street, into the shelter system, and move along the continuum of care that exists in the District.

In addition, First Helping provides the first level of social service assistance to many of these individuals. After initial intake assessments, outreach workers refer their clients to appropriate agencies around town. A special emphasis is placed on helping those clients suffering from substance abuse. Since 1998, the project has assisted in helping more than 100 men and women into treatment programs in the District, Maryland, and West Virginia.

Since its inception, First Helping has expanded in a number of ways. In 1999, DCCK entered into an agreement with the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District to provide street-level outreach to its homeless population. Likewise, DCCK received a contract from the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness to provide street-level outreach in Greater Southeast and Southwest Washington.

Fresh Start Catering

Fresh Start Catering and Contract Foodservice is an outgrowth of the job training mission at DC Central Kitchen. By employing graduates of the culinary job training program, Fresh Start further prepares them for permanent employment in the foodservice industry. Additionally, all of the proceeds from Fresh Start provide support for the Kitchen's charitable programs, thus creating an on-going, repetitive cycle of training, support and mutual reliance.

Fresh Start Catering was created in 1996 and after ten years in business, is a full-service company, catering to all segments of public organizations, private industry, government, churches, and individuals.

Fresh Start also offers a contract foodservice for clients who require regularly delivered, nutritious meals at an affordable cost. Launched in 2001, Contract Foodservice programs answered this need for some of DCCK's partner agencies. Past menus have focused on the special needs of clients, including menus designed for seniors, diabetics, and to fight obesity in children.

Healthy Returns

Healthy Returns is a new program of DC Central Kitchen focused on feeding young people healthier foods and helping them develop life-long improved eating habits. It was piloted during the summer of 2005 and began its inaugural year in the same fall. The program’s goal is to enable DC agencies to encourage our youth to eat better and lead healthier lives by consistently providing more substantial, healthier, kid-friendly foods.

Healthy Returns distributes healthy, substantial snacks and well-balanced meals to agencies serving low-income children, at-risk youth and struggling families across the Washington Metropolitan Area. Not only are children provided with healthier food but they also receive nutritional education as a component of the Healthy Returns Program. This information enables children and families to make smarter, informed food and health choices.

Healthy Returns’ partner agencies provide organized enrichment services to benefit children, youth and families. The program gives priority to agencies that focus on empowering life-skills (i.e. mentoring, apprenticeship, continuing education, counseling, nutrition/health education, job readiness skills).

Campus Kitchens Project

The Campus Kitchens Project was developed in 2001 as a national outgrowth of DC Central Kitchen, a successful local community kitchen model in Washington DC. The way it happened was kind of a marriage of two concepts.

In 1989, Robert Egger, founder and CEO of DC Central Kitchen, pioneered the idea of recycling food from around Washington DC and using it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop valuable work skills. DCCK became a national model, and as the idea grew, Robert was looking for a way to engage schools in the effort. He piloted a job training program with the American School Food Service, he regularly engaged high school and college students as volunteers at DCCK, and he spoke at universities all over the country.

In 1999, two Wake Forest University students, Jessica Shortall and Karen Borchert, created a small student organization called Homerun that engaged students in cooking and delivering dinners to folks in the community. What started as a hobby instead became a successful campus organization.

In 2001, the two concepts came together, and with a start-up grant from the Sodexho Foundation, The Campus Kitchens Project piloted its first program at Saint Louis University in Missouri.

References

DC Central Kitchen's Website
Begging for Change, by Robert Egger, 2004 Harper Collins [1]
Campus Kitchens' Website
A Hand Up In a DC System Full of Letdowns - The Washington Post
Catering With Conscience - The Christian Science Monitor