Doing Right at DC Central Kitchen

When did DC Central Kitchen get started?

January 20, 1989. The inaugural balls held for George H. W. Bush were the first donors to the kitchen. Founder Robert Egger was a nightclub guy and, as a promoter, he knew the importance of press and publicity and reached out to the new administration for support. The leftover food was redistributed to area shelters and soup kitchens and DC Central Kitchen became one of President Bush’s thousand points of light. More recently, in 2009, the Kitchen benefited from fundraising dinners surrounding†Barack Obama’s†presidential inauguration that featured Alice Waters and Washington area chefs.

Your motto is “Combating Hunger, Creating Opportunity.” What are the Kitchen’s core services?

We provide breakfast, outreach and counseling services to chronically homeless people. We recycle 3,000 pounds of food each day, converting it into 4,500 meals that we distribute to more than 100 shelters, transitional homes and rehabilitation clinics throughout the D.C. area. These partner agencies then refer clients to our Culinary Job Training program, where they receive the tools to start new careers. We complete the empowerment process by employing our graduates in our full-service catering company†or by placing them in full-time jobs at restaurants and hotels throughout the region. We are also expanding our operations and partnering with local farmers to procure fresh produce.

Why do your goals go so far beyond simply providing food to area organizations?

We are never going to feed our way out of hunger. This year, the Summer Fancy Food Show will be donating 100,000-plus pounds of food after the Show, and people are still going to be hungry. So we are looking beyond that to help break the cycle of poverty. We look at what we can do to empower people to get out of the line they are in now, waiting to be fed. That’s why we have our Culinary Job Training program. We are working to put ourselves out of business.

How long have you had a Culinary Training Program?

It has always been part of the kitchen but it became more formal and more codified. Sure, we can do meals that we send out to organizations that are helping to feed people. What would be better is to give these people a skill so they can break out on their own. It is more important than the meals we are doing every day and it will have a generational effect on our community
and country.

Specifically, the goal of the program is to prepare unemployed, underemployed, previously incarcerated persons and homeless adults for careers in the foodservice industry. In each class cycle, 25 students attend classes Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The 16-week culinary curriculum covers all facets of work in a professional kitchen including hands-on training instructed by an American Culinary Foundation (ACF) culinary coordinator. Local chefs also volunteer once a week to teach specific skills around fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs; stocks and sauces; meat and seafood cookery; cooking techniques and methods; knife skills; grains and pastas and other areas. In addition, all graduates complete the ServSafe Food Protection Manager’s Certification Course, a nationally recognized course from the National Restaurant Association’s Educational Foundation.

Our workforce development coordinator teaches job-readiness skills such as punctuality, resume writing, computer literacy, interviewing techniques, positive work attitude and teamwork.

Do you have challenges convincing employers to hire people who have been in jail or had drug problems despite their training?

Sure, but we try to get people to look at it in another way. Maybe this person who I was reluctant to hire does a great job for me. And he isn’t going back to jail and costing me and everyone else in my city $40,000 a year to support him. He’s paying rent and buying food and keeping his kids in schools. As people become more aware of that, the economic ripple effect is incredibly far-reaching.

How many meals do you prepare every year?

1.7 million meals.

How much full-time staff do you have?

115 people.

How has your work with local farms evolved?

We’ve been gleaning crops for 15 years at local farmers markets, picking up extra food and donations at the end of the day from the farmers. But we are now using funds we receive to buy foods from farms in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. We realized that we were buying tomatoes from Belgium when there are farmers in the area with produce that they can’t sell because it is aesthetically or geometrically considered a second but is still good, healthy, nutritious food.

We use that fresh produce to create nutritious meals for people who tend to be medically compromised. The produce is also used in making locally sourced, from-scratch meals in seven D.C. public schools. We provide people with healthy food while saving money on purchasing that food as well. It’s what Alice Waters and her people have been talking about all these years. A key part is that we jumped the distribution hurdle. We have trucks to go get the fresh produce. We have this machine that is putting out thousands of meals every day. And we have this enlightened self-interest that says we can’t keep putting resources in foods that are coming from across the world.

You used to run your own restaurant in Falls Church, Va., before joining DC Central Kitchen. What advice would you give other food businesses about charitable giving?

My view of owning a restaurant was that it needed to be a vital part of the community. But what I found is that restaurants can get overwhelmed with the requests they get. I realized that the smartest thing I could do was focus my philanthropic efforts on a couple of causes that had resonance with me and the community. That’s how I got involved with the DC Kitchen. And I would still recommend that.

Restaurant and hospitality folks are by nature some of the most giving and philanthropic people I’ve come across, and that can become a burden. You have to focus your efforts or the impact can be lost. There are thousands if not tens of thousands of organizations you could support, and not supporting all of them does not lessen their value or lessen your desire to help. What can lessen your impact is a scattershot approach. Make it count.

And don’t just give money or food; make the people you are working with accountable. Think of philanthropy as you would an investment. Is my involvement with this group going to affect in a positive way the community in which I live? It is going to have a lasting impact? At DC Central Kitchen, the organizations we work with must be accountable. We don’t want to be an enabling organization, but an empowering one. |SFM|

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Susan Segrest is a contributing editor to Specialty Food Magazine.

This article was featured in the July 2011 issue of Specialty Food Magazine. See other articles in this issue at: July 2011 Specialty Food Magazine.

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