This Halloween, DC Central Kitchen was honored to support the White House’s Hallo-READ event. Providing a safe and exciting trick-or-treat experience to area children while promoting literacy, the all-day event on the White House lawn is an unforgettable event each year—and this year, DC Central Kitchen played a vital role!
All week, our culinary students and graduates were hard at work baking 7,000 healthy ‘carrot cake’ muffins from scratch, packaging them, and preparing them for distribution to all the kids and families in attendance. Our role in this event was made possible by our close partners at Instacart. Together, we passed out these delicious muffins along with special “Turn the Page on Hunger” bookmarks featuring fun healthy facts about carrots to thousands of trick-or-treaters.
“It’s so empowering to know our students are having their skills showcased at the White House,” says long-time DC Central Kitchen culinary instructor Anand Shantam. Two DC Central Kitchen graduates, Vernon McRae and Anyé Queen, pivoted from their usual roles greeting and training volunteers in our kitchen to help lead DCCK’s activation on the White House grounds.
“Just being here at the White House with Instacart is amazing,” says Vernon. “I’ve never seen so many kids excited about a muffin – ever! Telling them what the muffin is and who made it brings so much joy to me.”
“As a DC nonprofit founded 35 years ago in our nation’s capital, we know we have an incredible opportunity and responsibility,” says CEO Mike Curtin, Jr. “The White House and Instacart could have any celebrity chef, any world-renowned caterer here to provide a healthy Halloween alternative. Knowing that we were chosen, and that our students and graduates are using their skills and knowledge to build a sense of community and inclusiveness at a time when our nation needs those very things, is something we’ll never forget.”
“At Instacart we believe everyone should have access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together. We are proud to support the White House’s trick-or-treat event for the second year in a row, alongside DC Central Kitchen, to provide snacks and a handy bookmark for families to pick out their favorite book, grab their favorite treat, and enjoy these moments together,” said Casey Aden-Wansbury, Instacart’s VP of Policy & Government Affairs.
When the muffins and bookmarks were all handed out, our work wasn’t done. We teamed up with our allies at the International Fresh Produce Association to recover nearly 5,000 pounds of surplus produce, mostly pumpkins and apples, that were safely transported to our kitchen facility and reused to nourish our community.
Thank you to all of our partners for helping DC Central Kitchen bring our work and mission to the most famous front yard in the land. This Halloween, our treat is a reminder of what’s possible when we come together to lift one another up and create new opportunities in our city.