Inspired by D.C. Central Kitchen and L.A. Kitchen, S.F. Kitchen is a social enterprise with a mission to unleash
the power of food to transform and sustain local communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. S.F. Kitchen will achieve its
mission by recovering healthy, local food that would otherwise go to waste, and use it to enable the unemployed, feed
the hungry, and engage the community.
Recover: S.F. Kitchen will recover food that would otherwise go to waste by both accepting donations
and procuring, at a discounted price, healthy fresh local produce that farmers, wholesalers and distributors are unable to sell. In addition, we will accept donated healthy local ingredients from businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants, company cafeterias,
and other food service companies. The food waste we collect will then be transported to our food-processing hub where it will be processed if necessary (e.g. diced or julienned) and stored appropriately (e.g. refrigerated or frozen) by S.F. Kitchen volunteers.
Some of this processed food will be packaged and sold, at a competitive market price, to food service companies, other businesses and individuals who wish to use our recovered food as ingredients for their cooking, while the rest will be stored at our hub
until needed to prepare healthy nutritious meals for S.F. Kitchen beneficiaries.
Enable: S.F. Kitchen will run an employment training program to equip previously incarcerated individuals
and transitional foster care youth with competitive culinary skills to enable them to enter the food service industry. This program will cover 15 weeks of classes taught by experts on topics ranging from food safety to knife skills, and will culminate in a
2-4 week internship at a food service company to give students hands-on kitchen experience. S.F. Kitchen staff will teach most classes, but we will also invite guest chefs to teach select classes. Graduates of our training program will either move onto food
service jobs or become full-time employees of S.F. Kitchen
Feed: With our recovered food waste, S.F. Kitchen graduates who stay on will manage and work alongside
volunteers to prepare healthy and ethnically diverse meals to feed our beneficiary populations who suffer from food insecurity. Our priority beneficiary population is hungry seniors, but other beneficiaries may also include hungry low-income families and children
as well as homeless individuals. We will both serve free meals at our dining room (congregate meal site) as well as subcontract with existing nonprofits and social service agencies that serve our target beneficiaries.
Engage: Volunteers are engaged throughout the different
phases of the S.F. Kitchen continuum - from food processing, meal preparation to meal service at our dining room. We seek to educate and work with any individuals and groups that share a passion for our mission and are interested in giving back to the local
community in a meaningful way.
Sustain: In order for S.F. Kitchen to sustain its impact, we need to be financially self-sustainable.
In addition to generating revenue from selling our recovered and processed food waste and subcontracting with social service agencies, we plan to incubate for-profit food businesses under our umbrella. Businesses may include a food truck, bakery, catering
company, jam or chutney producer and/or a prepared meal delivery service targeted for the middle to upper class. All our incubated businesses will prioritize repurposing healthy recovered local food waste and hiring graduates of our program. If and when one
of our incubated businesses reaches maturity, we will support it in spinning off into its own entity.
