DC Central Kitchen: Locally Sourced, Scratch-Cooked School Meals

 Across America, a new movement has emerged urging schools to offer healthier food options to children. The movement for tastier school food, called for by kids of all ages, is much older.

At DC Central Kitchen, we are proving that healthy, scratch-cooked meals can be enjoyable for children, affordable for school districts, and valuable for teachers who need children to be nourished and focused.

Since August of 2010, we have prepared 4,000 healthy, scratch-cooked meals each day for low-income children at 8 public and private schools in Washington, DC. Our schools are located primarily in Wards 7 and 8, home to DC’s highest rates of poverty, unemployment, and obesity.

We also work closely with dozens of small, local farms to ensure that more than 20% of all the food items we purchase are grown nearby, reducing our environmental impact and reinvesting in our area economy.

And like all DC Central Kitchen programs, our school food initiative offers meaningful employment for graduates of our Culinary Job Training program. Our school contracts now employ 35 men and women with histories of hardship at living wages. They have become relatable mentors to children facing serious barriers to educational and economic success, leading afterschool cooking programs and inspiring them to make healthy choices.

Our work to provide high-quality meals packed with local produce has earned wide acclaim. The Washington Post lauded our cost-effective approach, which emphasizes purchasing ingredients from area farmers, and DC Councilmember Mary Cheh said “DC Central Kitchen is the best partner to have” in this community’s efforts to use healthy food as a tool to empower our most vulnerable neighbors.