This Thanksgiving, DC Central Kitchen is set to provide emergency food support to more than 37,000 of our neighbors facing hunger and poverty. Hunger isn’t a one-size-fits-all problem, so our Thanksgiving response efforts meet our neighbors right where they are with the nourishing food and meaningful connections they need and deserve.
Here’s how DC Central Kitchen is stepping up for DC this Thanksgiving holiday:
- Whole Turkey Distribution – For an entire day, we will turn the parking lot adjacent to our headquarters into DC’s biggest turkey depot as we supply 19 front-line partners with more than 2,650 whole, frozen turkeys that they can use in their holiday programming and outreach. Special thanks to Butterball for their donation of 200 turkeys and DC United for providing both volunteer support and generous grant funding for this huge activation.
- Delicious Thanksgiving Meals – Thanks to the efforts of our devoted staff and hundreds of volunteers at both DC Central Kitchen and the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s Everything But The Turkey (EBTT) service activation, we will serve 16,318 individual meals to several existing partners, include afterschool programs, shelters, seniors, veterans, transitional housing programs, substance abuse treatment facilities, home-bound seniors, and mobility challenged veterans through our front-line nonprofit partners and our home-delivery partnership with DoorDash. This total includes the hundreds of additional daily meals we have been preparing since the start of November in response to rising local needs. Special thanks to H&S Bakery and Keany Produce for their donations.
- Grocery Distribution – We work with local food hubs, farmers, and wholesalers to supply whole, fresh produce, culturally relevant staple goods, and even infant formula (babies eat on Thanksgiving too!) directly to front-line partners and mutual aid networks reaching some of our most isolated children, families, and seniors. Through our work with DC Food Project, some of these items are also provided to food insecure families ahead of school closures to help them eat on the holiday and through the break while cafeterias are shuttered. We’re set to supply these partners with 29,912 total pounds of nutritious groceries for this holiday.
- Celebrating in DC School Cafeterias – Each day, thousands of DC schoolchildren in Wards 7 and 8 count on us for school meals while farmers know we’ll buy locally grown ingredients that sustain their farms and communities. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we plan to serve up 5,500 holiday-themed lunches featuring roasted turkey and gravy, whole grain roll, locally grown steamed green beans, local mashed potatoes cooked from scratch, and slices of fresh, local apples!
- Healthy Holiday Shopping – We make it possible for customers of all income-levels, and primarily those receiving SNAP benefits, to shop for nutritious, affordable foods at their neighborhood corner stores thanks to our regular deliveries of fresh and frozen produce. We expect Healthy Corners customers will purchase more than 10,000 units of healthy produce in the run-up to the holiday, with SNAP customers stretching their public benefits at a time of increased food costs. And we’ll continue our tradition of starting the holiday week at Wegmans, as our staff “shops” for generously donated meal ingredients alongside the DC Department of Human Services in support of dozens of DC families transitioning to financial independence.
We are truly grateful for the generosity and commitment of our volunteers, partner nonprofits, food donors, and philanthropic supporters throughout the run-up to Thanksgiving. Please join us in thanking all of these partners, as well as The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation, The Morningstar Foundation, Amazon, Philip L. Graham Fund, and American Humane Society for your generous support of this record-setting holiday effort.