Leaders in healthy food access
DC Central Kitchen and the Washington Nationals
My friends, I hope you had a great holiday weekend! Did you grill? Did you drink something delicious? I think a 4th of July celebration should look however you want, whether that’s hosting a backyard barbecue for 30 people, staying at home for a quiet evening, or going to a baseball game and eating too many hot dogs. DC can be a crazy and incredible place to celebrate the 4th…with loud parties everywhere and amazing fireworks on the Mall!
Today, I’m proud of my hometown for a different reason. You may remember that I have been involved with my friends at DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) for a long time. Founded in 1989, DC Central Kitchen combats hunger and food waste through culinary education and job creation. I’ve been lucky to be wear lots of hats over the years—volunteer, board chair, chair emeritus, host and co-creator of Capital Food Fight—and their founder, Robert Egger, is a great mentor and close friend. Robert founded DC Central Kitchen after working in nightclubs for years and feeling frustrated by how much food was wasted…and seeing a need within the DC community for access to fresh and healthy food. It was Robert’s thoughts on philanthropy—that it’s too often about the redemption of the giver and not the liberation of the receiver—that inspired me to start World Central Kitchen.
For over a decade, DCCK has partnered with the Washington Nationals Philanthropies. (People, you know what a big Nats fan I am...they’ve let me throw out the first pitch a couple of times, including at the World Series in 2019…and I even have my own bobblehead doll!). In 2013, DCCK began supplying meals to the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy, a program that has since grown to include cooking classes for kids to introduce healthy eating and kitchen skills they can use at home. And this spring, DCCK and WNP partnered up to improve food quality for ballpark concessions. Together, they are truly leaders in trying to make our professional sports stadiums more healthy.
In 2011, DCCK started Healthy Corners, a pioneering program that has been sustainably expanding healthy food access in DC neighborhoods over the last 13 years. DCCK delivers delicious fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables directly to corner stores in DC’s low-income communities and food deserts (areas that have limited access to affordable, healthy food) at wholesale prices and in smaller quantities than a conventional distributor, which allows the Healthy Corner partner store owners to sell the produce at below-market prices. People—since 2020, they've sold over 1.2 million healthy and accessible food items to the DC lower-income community! That's incredible!
Last week, the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy and DCCK launched a new “Healthy Corner” store at the Academy’s concession stand. People, this is a BIG DEAL. This new Healthy Corners location will expand access to healthy and affordable food for even more families in DC, and help children play and achieve their potential. And it’s proving something I’ve believed for a long time, that stadiums and other sports facilities can be used in positive ways in their communities even when there’s not a game being played…like when World Central Kitchen cooked meals in Nats Park for months during the pandemic, cooking almost a million meals in partnership with the team.
So I hope you can see why I’m so excited by this grassroots partnership. Just think…with a little innovation and a lot of common sense, we can be ending food deserts in America just by putting the infrastructure we have around us at the service of the people! Big problems really do have simple solutions. It’s the type of initiative I am so proud to support through my new venture, the Longer Tables Fund, to make our food system more affordable, accessible, and innovative. With leaders like the Washington Nationals and DC Central Kitchen, our community can continue to model the solutions we need in DC and across the country.
Friends, join me in congratulating DCCK and the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy on an amazing new program. We should all be following their lead by working to make healthy and delicious food more accessible to everyone in our communities.
To learn more about DC Central Kitchen’s work, click here.
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Classy pay, an add on to Plaid necessary for donation from bank is very awkward. I'm going around in circles and can't get in! I've lost confidence in its security.
I'll try another way