Community Meals
Every day with the help of dedicated volunteers, we transform 3,000 pounds of otherwise wasted food into 5,000 healthy meals for our community. These aren’t simply bags of donated groceries or crates of canned goods – they’re real meals, made by hand by graduates of our Culinary Job Training program who now work for us full-time at living wages. We then put these meals onto our fleet of trucks and deliver them to more than 80 partner agencies in the Washington metropolitan area, including homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics, and after-school programs.
SUMMER MEAL SITES
This year, DC Central Kitchen will be back on the road delivering free meals from our Mobile Meals food truck and meeting families where they’re at. Partnering with organizations and government offices like DC Hunger Solutions, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and Cure the Streets allows us to expand our reach everyone who’s in need of a nutritious meal.
In response to the previous year’s high demand, we’re expanding our outreach to over 30 sites including public pools, summer camps, public schools, apartment complexes, community centers, and even retirement communities.
Yellow – All Ages
Red – 18 and under
Purple – 18 and under
Find the closest summer meal site to you >>
3.2 million
meals prepared for local shelters, nonprofits, and
public schools
1,000,089 pounds
of food recovered from grocery stores, farms, and other sources to prepare our meals
Over $3.7 million
saved by nonprofits who no longer need to prepare meals for their clients