D.C. Central Kitchen

About D.C. Central Kitchen

Through job training, healthy food distribution, and local farm partnerships, DC Central Kitchen offers path-breaking solutions to poverty, hunger, and poor health. Since our founding in 1989, DC Central Kitchen has prepared 25 million meals for our low-income and at-risk neighbors in Washington, DC. That’s a lot of meals – but don’t mistake us for a soup kitchen. The 5,000 meals we dish out every day are loaded into our fleet of trucks and distributed at little or no cost to 100 nearby homeless shelters, transitional homes, and nonprofit organizations, saving them money and nourishing their clients. Most importantly, our meals go out with a message: in our main kitchen, 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. We know food can do so much more than fill stomachs: our mission is to use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.