Annual Report 2022 - DC Central Kitchen

The Opening

A Note from our CEO:

Because of you, DC Central Kitchen has kept our doors open and stoves cooking for more than 12,400 consecutive days. After 34 years of service to our community, we are opening the doors of our long-awaited new headquarters and expanding our life-changing programs like never before. Openness is a value we instill in our culinary students as they embrace new skills and strategies, and it is a defining attribute of how we seek out challenges and possibilities in the fight against hunger and poverty.

This annual impact report highlights the ways you’ve helped us open doors and minds across our city this year while preparing for a new season of growth and innovation as we move into our new home.

I’m also pleased to share that after a lengthy hiatus forced by the pandemic and the limitations of our previous headquarters, our beloved volunteer program is now open. Please visit dccentralkitchen.org/volunteer to secure your spot (and stylish hairnet) and come lend a hand in our glorious new kitchen very soon. As always, please contact me anytime with questions or ideas at mcurtin@dccentralkitchen.org.

With gratitude,

Mike Curtin, Jr., CEO

We have opened the doors of the Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs and Justice, replacing our previous headquarters in a shelter basement. Over the next three years, we’ll double our meal production, create 50 new jobs, welcome 20,000 volunteers a year, and increase the number of people we train for culinary careers each year by 150%. Thank you for making this transformational expansion possible.

Featured Stories

Creating Career Pathways

The Next Generation of DC Central Kitchen Chefs

In the past year, we empowered our 63 culinary graduates to achieve an 86% job placement rate. Some of our students outlined their hopes and dreams in a profile piece by reporters Lisa Held and Jake Price of Civil Eats.

A Powerful Partnership to Support Opportunity Youth

As part of our partnership to enhance the economic success of Black youth, The NBA Foundation spotlighted how our Culinary Job Training program opens meaningful career pathways for young people facing barriers to employment in the DC community.

Marianne’s Cafe Opens at MLK Library

We opened our second social enterprise cafe, Marianne’s by DC Central Kitchen, in the heart of downtown DC, where we provide training and job opportunities to our culinary students. Our social enterprises generated 57% of our total revenue this year and employed dozens of our graduates at living wages.

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Expanding Food Access

Bringing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables to DC Corner Stores

With 53 partner stores and 340,509 units of healthy food sold last year, our Healthy Corners program is growing by leaps and bounds. We helped participating store owners accept electronic WIC benefits for the first time, provided expanded refrigeration so they could stock more produce, and doubled their sales of locally grown fruits and veggies.

What a Pepper’s Journey from Farm to Pantry Says About American Hunger

In 2022, we sourced 820,020 pounds of food from local farmers to create 2.7 million meals for our community. “There’s a gratification knowing that people who couldn’t get a good meal are getting a good meal,” Director of Culinary Operations Kisha Marshall told The Washington Post when they covered our transformation of a pack of Virgnia peppers into nutritious dignified meals into thousands of nutritious, dignified meals.

Healthy Corners Tops 1 Million Units of Healthy Food

Since 2020, our Healthy Corners team has significantly increased the volume of fresh, affordable food sold at corner stores around DC. This year, we reached 1 million units of nutritious, affordable food sold since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

DC Central Kitchen Serves Up Food and Connection on Thanksgiving

Thanks to creative local partnerships, generous donors, and dedicated volunteers, we distributed 1,300 turkeys to dozens of community partners on Thanksgiving in 2022. Together, we overcame significant supply chain and inflationary challenges to serve more than 14,000 of our neighbors for the holiday.

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Reimagining School Food

Nudging Kids Toward Healthy Choices

Between serving healthy meals at 19 schools city-wide and undertaking innovative research and a partnership with American University to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, our Healthy School Food team had a busy year. Thanks in part to student-focused events like our “Fresh Feature Fridays” and the introduction of healthy appetizers when students entered our cafeterias, our meals received a 96% student satisfaction rate this school year!

Keeping Students and Families Fed During School Breaks

With DC home to one of the nation’s highest rates of childhood food insecurity, we made sure summer vacation and school breaks didn’t make life harder for kids and families. We served tens of thousands of scratch-cooked meals to kids and families at 30 summer camps, public pools, and community locations thanks to creative partnerships and our unstoppable food trucks.

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Shifting Systems & Celebrating Community

The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health

We were honored to participate in The White House’s second national Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. As part of the conference, DCCK CEO Mike Curtin moderated the Nourishing Bright Futures: Ensuring Affordable Food for all Children and Families panel. Read our full recap to learn more about the panel's insights and how The Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs & Justice will help answer the president's call to end hunger.

Food Donation Improvement Act

We participated in a day of advocacy on Capitol Hill to champion the Food Donation Improvement Act, a bipartisan bill that President Biden recently signed into law, which offers a critical step toward ending hunger and food waste.

The Return of Capital Food Fight

DC’s baddest night of doing good made a triumphant return to The Anthem on April 7th with Chef Benjamin Lambert of The Point DC walking away with the coveted champion boxing gloves after a thrilling 3-round culinary battle. Save the date for our next Capital Food Fight on November 9th, 2023!

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Our People & Partners

Washington Business Journal: CEO of the Year

CEO Mike Curtin received the Washington Business Journal’s “CEO of the Year” Award. As Mike highlighted in his acceptance speech, he is continuously inspired by the courage and stamina of DCCK staff. Recalling the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he remarked, "...they recognized the incredible importance of the job they had to do and they did it. And they did it courageously, and they did it professionally, and they did it with dignity, and they did it with love."

New Faces

DCCK continued growing this year, employing 102 of our Culinary Job Training graduates across our organization. These alumni advance our mission as culinary instructors, procurement professionals, student recruiters, nutrition educators, and volunteer managers. We also welcomed Dr. Beverley Wheeler as our first-ever Chief Knowledge Officer. We are thrilled to have Dr. Wheeler leading our program evaluation, policy engagement, and open-source knowledge sharing efforts with peers and researchers across the country.

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FINANCIALS

We continue to generate much of our operating revenue through our sustainable social enterprises. Essential support is also provided by foundations, individuals, corporations, and government grants. Financials presented here are a summary – you can access our full audited financials here.

While the stories above reflect our work to fight hunger differently in 2022 and beyond, the financials listed here encompass the fiscal year of 2022, running from July 2021-June 2022.

Thank You!

DC Central Kitchen is grateful for the thousands of financial supporters, partners, and volunteers who make our work possible every year through their generous gifts of time and resources. We are honored to recognize many of these contributions in our 2022 donor list. Donor lists for the current fiscal year of 2023 will appear in the corresponding annual report, which will be available in the spring of 2024.

We couldn’t do this without your support.

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