Access to good food is a universal right.
Community Kitchen’s restaurant model demonstrates that good food can be grown, delivered, prepared, and served justly and equitably.
Our food system gets it wrong.
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ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
Food production generates 24% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Routine overuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics drives pollution, decreased biodiversity, nitrogen runoff, and widespread health problems. The brunt of this damage is borne by BIPOC and marginalized populations in the US and around the world.
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DISCRIMINATORY JOBS
Nearly 70% of restaurant workers in the United States - mostly women, immigrants, BIPOC and marginalized populations - earn less than $15 per hour. Harassment, unpaid overtime, and unpredictable schedules predominate.
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DISEASE
Diet-related and preventable chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer cause 678,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. These diseases disproportionately affect BIPOC and marginalized populations.
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INEQUITABLE ACCESS
For the majority of Americans, nutritious food is difficult to find and afford. 19 million Americans, most of them from BIPOC and marginalized populations, live in areas with limited access to affordable, nutritious food. More than 60% of all calories are in ultraprocessed foods.
We can reimagine it.
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LOCAL & SUSTAINABLE
We support local, marginalized farmers who use agroecological practices, minimizing impact on the environment and maximizing flavor and seasonality.
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DIGNIFIED JOBS
We pay workers a dignified living wage, with full benefits and a reliable schedule. We prioritize hiring from our communities and investing in our workers for their future success.
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FRESH, NUTRITIOUS & DELICIOUS
We prepare top-quality food from scratch that appeals to all members of our communities, using primarily local and seasonal ingredients.
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ACCESSIBLE
We are creating an innovative sliding scale to make our food affordable to everyone. We’ll make that sliding scale scheme open source to help advance the growing public restaurant sector.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
— Buckminster Fuller
We’re part of the growing Public Restaurant movement.
Community Kitchen is collaborating with world-class partners to maximize our impact, centering justice and equity in all we do.
Community Kitchen will be a meeting place, an event space, a neighborhood gathering space. We will build community and offer a space where diversity, equity, and dignity are norms, not exceptions.
Direct Impact
Community Kitchen will have a profound impact on its community, team, farmers, and the environment. In our first three years of restaurant operation, we will:
SERVE
335,462
meals for low-income guests
CREATE
80
living-wage jobs averaging $29/hr
SAVE
$8.5M
for low-income guests
MITIGATE
30%+
of GHG emissions vs fast food meal
INVEST
$7.1M
in local good food farmers and vendors
SUPPORT
50+
local, BIPOC-led & regenerative farms
Long-term Goals
Community Kitchen’s impact on workers, farmers, climate,
and food security is amplified by a multi-pronged approach to supporting the Public Restaurant movement.
01 Grassroots, open-source ‘franchising’
We’ll provide financial and operational support to organizations and communities replicating our model around the country and the world.
02 Community Kitchen unit expansion with partners
We’ll work with trusted partners to open new branches of Community Kitchen, first in NYC and then around the country.
03 Policy advocacy
We’ll assert universal access to good food as a human right, and advocate for local and national policy that funds the establishment of Public Restaurants nationally.
04 Driving the Public Restaurant movement
We’ll work with sister organizations worldwide to grow the burgeoning movement to establish public restaurants.
Let’s talk!
Interested in joining the Community Kitchen team, partnering with us, or supporting our ongoing work? Submit this form to get in touch.