D.C. Central Kitchen

DC Central Kitchen uses food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities. Since our founding in 1989, DC Central Kitchen has prepared 48 million meals for our low-income neighbors in Washington, DC - but don't mistake us for a soup kitchen. The 10,000 meals we prepare each day are distributed at little or no cost to 80 homeless shelters, transitional homes, and nonprofit organizations, saving them money and nourishing their clients. Most importantly, we're working to shorten DC's line of hungry people by the way we're feeding it. At our new headquarters in Southwest DC, we offer a rigorous Culinary Job Training program for unemployed men and women who want to replace homelessness, addiction, and incarceration with new careers and changed lives. Our graduates have averaged an 85% job placement rate, and we now employ over 100 graduates in social enterprises that create living wage jobs, serve healthy food, and earn the majority of our annual revenue.

We envision a more just city where everyone has access to healthy food, meaningful careers, and oppo

Goal One: Increase enrollment in our acclaimed workforce development services by 150 percent by 2025.

Goal Two: Expand healthy food access and job opportunities through our social enterprises.

Goal Three: With the opening of our new headquarters in 2022, DCCK seeks to reframe the role that nonprofits and social enterprises can play in sustainable, resilient, and inclusive urban development.

DC Central Kitchen’s unique model is based on a ‘leadership cycle’ through which individuals who have experienced poverty, hunger, incarceration, and trauma are central to solving these challenges in our community. We invest in the leadership cycle beginning with our training program and continue as we create jobs for our graduates here at DC Central Kitchen. We currently employ over 100 of these individuals at living wages with comprehensive benefits in nearly every department. In addition to serving in critical kitchen positions as cooks, leads, and managers, our graduates also work as culinary instructors, job coaches, outreach workers, and nutrition educators. DCCK looks to graduates for strategic feedback on our CJT program and many also serve as relatable mentors to current trainees and engage our alumni network.

DC Central Kitchen adapted to external changes by preparing and serving 5.1 million emergency meals to children, families, senior citizens, and adults experiencing homelessness. We have invested $3 million in hard-hit local farmers via direct purchases, leading one farmer to say that as a result of his partnership with DCCK, “…we’re running three trucks a week to DC. We went from being worried that we might go out of business to actually being profitable for the larger part of the year.” And here at DCCK, we have sustained living-wage jobs for more than 100 graduates of our Culinary Job Training program with comprehensive benefit packages. Food alone will never solve hunger so in July, we restarted our Culinary Job Training program. This acclaimed program prepares adults with histories of incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and trauma, as well as young adults who are disconnected from both work and school, for culinary careers. With the 19 members of this class successfully completing our program, we have now officially graduated 2,000 individuals. Throughout the summer of 2021, we used low-income schools and public pools as emergency meal distribution sites, reaching communities that have yet to see much evidence of an economic recovery. In August, we resumed our Healthy School Food program and now serve more than 27,000 scratch-cooked, locally sourced breakfasts, lunches, and suppers each week to food insecure schoolchildren at 17 DC schools. August marked the 10th anniversary of our Healthy Corners program. This innovative, market-based, and myth-busting solution to urban ‘food deserts’ has been profiled by The Today Show and The Washington Post for transforming small corner stores into reliable access points for healthier foods. Thanks to Healthy Corners’ successes in expanding WIC and SNAP benefits for customers selecting our fresh and frozen produce, we are forecasting a 32% increase in sales of healthy fruits and vegetables next year.