If you’ve ever seen one of our jam-packed delivery vehicles on the road, chances are it’s heading to a front-line partner doing heroic work to feed and empower our neighbors. We select these partners with care based on their mission, impact, and deep ties to our community. Two of these inspiring partners, DC Food Project and Plenty To Eat, have been in overdrive throughout 2025 and are helping us do even more for DC this summer.
DC Food Project has been working with DC Central Kitchen since we first connected during our emergency relief efforts during the worst of the COVID-19 shutdown. Since then, we have provided more than 441,600 lbs. of nutritious foods to this parent-led effort to solve hunger among schoolchildren. Their innovative model includes establishing dignified food pantries in schools and distributing nutritious foods in bulk before school breaks to families that school staff know are in need. In the last five school years, we’ve helped DC Food Project grow from supporting 10 schools to 55 in DC through our logistical support, food donations, and purchases of 30 large cabinets that are now used for school-based pantries.
In the last school year, they supported more than 3,000 pre-identified students and their families and 50 food insecure seniors. At their recent distribution outside Ida B. Wells Middle School, DC Food Project cofounder Alysa MacClellan told us, “Given the climate that we’re in currently, we think the need is going to start getting a lot bigger. We might be going into more pandemic-like times where people are losing jobs…and they’re being put into different situations that they didn’t expect to be.”
The demand for DC Food Project’s work has only increased. “We started the school year off implementing 12 new pantry programs right off the bat.” In addition to establishing and coordinating school-by-school ordering for their pantries, DC Food Project distributes produce boxes, shelf stable food items and hot meals five times a year ahead of school breaks in November, December, February, April, and June. DC Central Kitchen delivers approximately up to– 11,000 pounds of bulk items to DC Food Project for each of these distributions, which volunteers then distribute.
“Towards January, we started getting a lot of calls from schools,” Alyssa explained. “We have not been able to implement more pantries just due to funding on our end. Right now, we have a wait list of 25 schools who want to have pantries starting next year, and unfortunately, we’re just not able to do all of that right now due to funding. We have been working with a lot of those schools to implement our share table programs, which rescues food through the cafeteria, a small supplement to helping support some of the students in schools. We’re just working harder to find money somewhere to be able to help these schools that are in dire need.”
Though the school year is wrapping up, we all know people of all ages will need summer meals. As they did during the summer of 2020, DC Food Project has once again compiled a very useful list of school meal sites all youth 18 and younger can get a free meal, DC Parks & Recreation meal sites, community meal locations, and DC Central Kitchen summer meal sites.
“We are in every ward, so we’re happy to be able to say that and we’re supporting schools in every ward and every situation,” Allyssa says. “And we’re just doing what we can to help.”
The devoted parents at DC Food Project aren’t the only ones going above and beyond for their community right now. Plenty To Eat was created by Connie Willians. A graduate of DC Central Kitchen’s Culinary Job Training program in 1999 and DCCK assistant chef in the mid– 2000s, Connie always had a passion for giving back. Drawing on her time at the Kitchen and her experiences trying to balance her responsibilities as an adult learner with finding enough food to sustain herself and her family, she founded her thoughtful version of a community-based food pantry in 2017. Plenty To Eat now serves DC residents from all 8 wards while Connie uses her expertise and the degrees she has earned since graduating from DC Central Kitchen to teach safe food handling to new classes of DCCK students.
Open every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Plenty To Eat is based out of the Academy of Hope public charter school in Ward 5. Currently feeding 80-120 people each month, Plenty to Eat’s food distributions feature hundreds of pounds of fresh produce in addition to shelf stable items. Every fall, the ever conscientious and organized Connie is the first to sign up for DCCK’s large-scale turkey distribution to ensure she can provide loving Thanksgiving meals to her visitors. Last fall, she provided 150 turkeys from DCCK via her pantry.
“At Plenty to Eat, you can come and get whatever you need,” Connie told us. “If doesn’t matter if you have a job. It doesn’t matter if you have SNAP. Some people are working, but can only afford their rent, or on utilities are don’t have enough to buy groceries. If you need food, we’re going to give you food. On Tuesdays you just come through the line of tables and you choose what you want to eat. We don’t choose it for you.”
In addition to their Tuesday and Wednesday food distributions, any and everyone that needs a meal is also encouraged to utilize their grab-and-go tables and refrigerators, which feature meals provided by DC Central Kitchen and are delivered every Wednesday. “Sometimes people don’t want to say that they’re in need of food,” Connie said, “And that is what the table and refrigerator are for.”
We’re honored to work with the committed leaders and volunteers of DC Food Project and Plenty To Eat. Working in and with the community, both are supplying thousands of pounds of food and scratch-cooked meals from DC Central Kitchen directly to students and seniors while representing the very best of DC.