Fresh Start Catering & Contract Foodservice

Serving More Than Just Great Food

Fresh Start Catering & Contract Foodservice is an employment project of DC Central Kitchen. By employing recent graduates and instructing current students, Fresh Start provides ongoing foodservice training to men and women of DC Central Kitchen, thus further preparing them for long term employment in the foodservice industry. All of our proceeds go directly to support this effort, as well as other programs of DC Central Kitchen, including:

• Our food rescue, recycling, and meal distribution program that transforms about 1 1/2 tons of surplus food from area foodservice businesses into 4,500 meals a day, 365 days a year. These meals go to approximately 100 non-profit agencies that serve those in our community who might otherwise go hungry.
• Our Culinary Job Training program, which gives valuable professional and life skills to men and women who are homeless, chronically unemployed, or moving from welfare to work.
• First Helping, a street-level outreach project providing meals, information and referrals to men and women who are living on the streets.
• The Campus Kitchens Project, which partners with colleges and universities in campus-based community kitchens to connect schools and students with the community in the fight against hunger.

The main ingredient found in everything we make at Fresh Start is our dynamic social mission. With every reception or luncheon we plan, with each of the thousands of sandwiches, salads and cookies we make, with every elegant dinner we serve, we blend a concern for the community, as well as for our employees, with the fight against hunger and the indignity it visits on its victims. All of the production staff are graduates of the Culinary Job Training program. Fresh Start caters any and all events - from office lunches to conference breakfasts to fully-staffed weddings.

Additionally, Fresh Start offers an affordable, contract foodservice option that operates out of the DC Central Kitchen facility - a fully equipped 10,000 square foot, health code-approved industrial kitchen. It is also an outgrowth of the food rescue and job training missions of DC Central Kitchen. Fresh Start hires and employs men and women who have graduated from the Kitchen's Culinary Job Training program, as well as adults who have had difficulties finding employment in the past. Fresh Start Contract Foodservice provides meals on a daily basis to nonprofits in the DC area.

On behalf of the employees of Fresh Start Catering & Contract Foodservice, everyone at DC Central Kitchen, and the thousands of others who are getting a fresh start because of your support, I encourage you to join the community of individuals and businesses who are making a difference by combating hunger and creating opportunity.