Providing Produce for Low-Income Populations

    America’s dependence on processed food has produced an array of detrimental effects—heart disease, diabetes, and obesity chief among them. These interrelated problems are particularly pronounced in low-income minority populations, and especially so for women and children. The District of Colombia exemplifies this crisis. Feeding America reports that 29% of DC’s children—over 30,000 in all—live in poverty. Our food insecurity and unemployment rates both exceed the national average. For far too many people, poor health and poverty constitute a vicious cycle of dependency. Our city needed a way of connecting rural produce to low-income urban populations.

    Since 2008, our staff and volunteers have accepted donations and purchased discounted produce from local farmers, trucked them to our central location in DC, processed them for use in meal production, and delivered them to 100 area agencies serving low-income populations. We have procured hundreds of thousands of pounds of local produce, much of which, due to blemishes or odd shaping, would have otherwise gone to waste. In our first full year of local produce partnerships, we produced 1.75 million meals, increasing the nutritional value while reducing our dependence on processed foods.

    Today, we are expanding our capacity for food recovery, meal service, and social entrepreneurship through the DC Central Commissary initiative. Obtaining a second kitchen facility this fall will double the amount of food we recover, the number of meals we serve, and the income from our revenue generating business endeavors in just one year.

    Taking Action in the Community

    Assess:
    DC’s struggling neighborhoods—particularly Wards 7 and 8—face a complex set of challenges. Unemployment in Ward 7 stands at 20%; in Ward 8, 30%. While obesity is responsible for 15% of all deaths in DC, that number is even higher in these wards. Our close partnerships with social service and government agencies pointed to a growing need to not just feed low-income people, but to provide them with food capable of fueling active minds and healthy bodies. We then reached out to local farms, recovering their unwanted, sometimes misshapen produce—called ‘seconds’—and purchasing other fruits and vegetables for pennies on the pound. We have quickly become a prominent bulk purchaser of local produce in our region, establishing ourselves as a leading urban hub for rural products. DCCK thus increased the financial security of area farmers while enhancing the food security of our urban clients.

    Plan:
    DC Central Kitchen turns leftover food into millions of meals for thousands of at-risk individuals while offering nationally recognized culinary job training to adults overcoming homelessness, addiction, and incarceration. We use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.  Our farm partnerships help us achieve these goals on a greater scale while reducing our environmental impact and increasing our financial sustainability. By leveraging strong community partnerships and existing resources, we identified a pressing problem in our community—a cycle of poverty, food insecurity, and poor health—and positioned ourselves to address it. Through our partner agencies, we are supplying healthy meals and nutrition education to the children, adults, and families who need them most. In a time of economic insecurity, DCCK is bolstering the income of farmers and equipping low-income adults to find and obtain living-wage jobs. The Commissary will be vital to these interrelated efforts.

    Act:
    In 2008, we began cultivating the partnerships essential to the Commissary project’s success. First, we recruited area farms to make donations and discounted purchases. Then we gathered thousands of volunteers to glean produce and process it in our main kitchen. When local produce improved the quality and nutrition content of our free meals and revenue-generating catering and food services, we found new opportunities for growth. We now hold food service contracts with DC Public Schools and a nearby university, enhancing DCCK’s financial sustainability and providing jobs for graduates of our culinary training program for unemployed adults representing marginalized groups. The meals we send to shelters and nonprofits are healthier than ever. In August, we won a contract to provide 3,300 daily lunches to seven DC public schools. Once we open our new Commissary facility, we will recover more produce, serve more meals, and become more sustainable than ever before.

    Evaluate:
    We will evaluate the success of the Farm to Kitchen Commissary initiative through the following criteria:

    • The total amount of food we recover and use to fuel programs of personal empowerment;

    • The amount of local produce we buy and the number of farmers we buy it from;

    • The amount of money DCCK saves as a result of buying produce from these local sources;

    • The number of jobs we are able to create and sustain through expanded food processing operations.

    • The increased nutritional value of the 4,000 meals we serve each day. Our Nutrition Educator and Resources Procurement personnel will track what food we obtain, how we prepare it and the resulting improvements in the quality of our meals.

    By collecting the above data points, we hope to judge and improve our effectiveness in delivering healthy, local food to low-income individuals throughout the DC area.

    Sustain:
    An economic crisis is no time for a hunger and homelessness fighting organization to reduce its services. As we expand our revenue-generating operations to cover more than half of our operating costs, we hope to be less dependent on increasingly strained corporate and foundation funding sources. However, our corporate and foundation partners remain vital to DCCK’s ongoing operations. And for organizations seeking to maximize their philanthropic impact, our efficient, our effective programming represents an unmatched social dividend. Unlike many organizations, we do not see grant support simply as a way to pay one set of expenses until another grant comes in. We are positioning our organization to become a more sustainable social enterprise than ever before. With the help of our revenue-generating enterprises, individual donors, corporate supporters, and foundation funders, we will continue with confidence our fight to end hunger in our city.

    Impact/Results

    Thus far, we have:

    • Produced a record number of annual meals for low-income individuals and families, preparing 1.75 million in 2009.

    • Increased the nutritional value of our meals by reducing the use of pre-packaged, commercially processed foods. For example, we have totally replaced the use of tater tots with farm fresh roasted potatoes and substituted 5,000 pounds of canned, salted tomato products for local heirloom tomatoes. The 2009 harvest also prepared us for winter, as DCCK froze 11,000 pounds of local vegetables for later meals.

    • Increased our operating hours, adding three evening volunteer food processing shifts each week and allowing 4,000 more people to volunteer in our kitchen annually.

    • Hired 5 graduates from our Culinary Job Training Program for unemployed adults overcoming homelessness, addiction, and incarceration to work these shifts.

    D.C. Central Kitchen Website: www.dccentralkitchen.org