DC Central Kitchen, Inc.

DC Central Kitchen is a nonprofit developer of innovative social ventures that break the cycle of hunger and poverty. Each of our food industry ventures pursues a triple bottom line of creating opportunities for meaningful careers, expanding healthy food access, and test innovative solutions to systemic failures. By testing, refining, and sharing new best practices for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, we hope to advance and inspire solutions that empower marginalized and at-risk people to achieve their own lasting liberation from the cyclical conditions of hunger and poverty.

DC Central Kitchen fights hunger differently by using career training, job creation, and sustainable business practices to strengthen local food systems and reduce disparities in health and economic opportunity. We operate five social ventures which collectively recover 2 million pounds of food, prepare and distribute 3.5 million meals each year, and train 100 adults with high barriers to employment for culinary careers.

As a 'central kitchen,' DC Central Kitchen creates instant collaboration and major economies of scale. We leverage partnerships with three dozen restaurants, wholesalers, and local farm to recover unused food at our centralized facility. There, we prepare nutritious meals in bulk and distribute them at little or no cost to 83 nonprofit agencies, which saves them – and their donors – $3.7 million in food and personnel costs annually. Dozens of agencies that receive our meals in turn refer their at-risk clients to our Culinary Job Training program, empowering them to progress along their path to self-sufficiency. We serve as the contracted school food vendor at 15 schools, 12 of which are located in Wards 7 and 8. As a school food vendor, each of our school meals meets the stringent requirements of the DC Healthy Schools Act. We have the unique capability to cluster our supplemental meal service, nutrition education, and corner store produce offerings in the neighborhoods around these target schools in a cost-effective way. Perhaps most importantly, we leverage the insights and experiences of our 78 employees who graduated from our Culinary Job Training program for at-risk adults to innovate, expand, and meet the unique needs of our target communities.

Founded in 1989 as the nation's first 'community kitchen,' DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) has specialized in efficient food aggregation, preparation, and distribution for more than two decades. We are at the forefront of the national healthy food access movement, fighting obesity with inclusive programs that leverage the energy, feedback, and capabilities of our target communities. DCCK is the leading US nonprofit engaged in the commercial scale production of healthy, scratch-cooked school meals – now some 7,000 per day – and our efforts to directly distribute nutritious snacks and fresh produce to corner stores in low-income neighborhoods with little to no access to healthy options is the first and largest program of its kind in the country. Today, DCCK's food access, educational, and economic development services address the social determinants of health for more than 13,000 low-income DC residents each year. Over the past quarter-century, we have recovered 30 million pounds of unused food, distributed 30 million meals to at-risk community members, and trained 1,500 unemployed adults for culinary careers. Our path-breaking social enterprises, first launched in the mid-1990s, offer meaningful job opportunities for 79 of our culinary graduates while generating revenue for our core programs. For the past six years, our social enterprise portfolio has generated more than half of our organization's total revenue. Last year, DCCK was profiled by The Atlantic, PBS NewsHour, the Washington Post, National Geographic, and National Public Radio, and was named one of the top social enterprises on the planet by the founder of the World Social Enterprise Forum. Moving forward, we seek to build on our status as the city's leading nonprofit provider of healthy meals to schools, homeless shelters, and nonprofit agencies, increasing our annual meal distribution total from 3 million to 4 million meals by 2019. We seek to expand our capacity to aggregate local farm products, operate value-added food production activities, increase student breakfast and lunch participation, and pursue revenue generating business opportunities that will have a long-term impact on the accessibility and affordability of healthy food. Additionally, we seek to break new ground as a best practice provider of workforce training and supportive, living wage employment to at-risk individuals through culinary social enterprise. In two years, we plan to annually train 100 - 110 men and women with significant barriers to employment for culinary careers, and employ 80 - 90 of our culinary graduates in an array of capacities from serving healthy school meals to providing catered corporate lunches. We are currently developing additional career services that include continuing education and managerial training for previous culinary graduates and a tailored curriculum for opportunity youth with high barriers to employment.