Feeding South Florida Celebrates Grand Opening of its State-of-the-Art, 5,000-Square-Foot Community
Feeding South Florida, the leading domestic hunger-relief organization in South Florida, will unveil its new, state-of-the-art, 5,000-square-foot community kitchen during a virtual grand opening celebration on Sunday, July 12, 4–5 p.m. via Zoom and Facebook Live! Viewers are encouraged to tune in to view the kitchen, which will open at Feeding Palm Beach County, the organization’s Palm Beach County headquarters located in Boynton Beach. Although the kitchen is located in Palm Beach County, it will provide meals throughout the South Florida region. The community kitchen is a highly anticipated community resource, with years in the making.
During the event, some of South Florida’s favorite chefs will use their talents to showcase the kitchen’s full capacity. They will prepare the very first meals in the kitchen using nutritious items regularly distributed by Feeding South Florida, converted into unique, savory, and creative dishes that appeal to the whole family. The dishes will offer a fresh response to the familiar question, “What’s for dinner?”
The featured chefs are Chef Lindsay Autry of The Regional Kitchen & Public House in West Palm Beach, Chef Allen Susser of Chef Allen’s Consulting in Hollywood, and Chef Timon Balloo of Balloo Restaurant in downtown Miami. Hosting the event are Chef Ralph Pagano of Naked Taco in Coconut Creek, and Chef Randy Fisher of CREaM in Miami.
The highly anticipated event will reveal Feeding South Florida’s longtime goal of creating a multi-purpose community kitchen. It serves as a meal production site, culinary training program, social enterprise catering, incubator space for graduates of the program, and healthy cooking classes.
The kitchen will advance Feeding South Florida’s mission of ending hunger in South Florida by serving up to 10,000 meals per day for children’s after-school and summer programs, meals for older adults and medically tailored meals. The kitchen will also provide critical meals during disaster response.
Event sponsorships ranging from $5,000–$15,000 are available. Mayors is the Presenting Sponsor. Publix Supermarket Charities and DCA for Health, a nonprofit organization of Diagnostic Centers of America, are also sponsors. For more information about sponsorships, email Michele Fernandez at mfernandez@feedingsouthflorida.org.
Those interested in participating can register at FSFkitchen.eventbrite.com to receive the Zoom link for the event. Donations of any amount are encouraged and will directly provide fresh and healthy meals for kids and homebound older adults.
Participants can secure VIP tickets by donating $100 or more. VIPs receive exclusive digital recipes created by participating chefs, a limited edition Feeding South Florida gift, and access to the special digital newsletter “The Dish ― Kitchen Edition.” VIP ticket quantities are limited.
“This community kitchen is a vision that Feeding South Florida has had for quite some time, and we are so excited to finally present it to the community it via this virtual event,” said Vélez. “This is just the beginning, because the kitchen will serve the community by providing meals, workforce training, catering as social innovation, an incubator for community support, and family cooking classes.”
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Feeding South Florida has distributed over 40 million pounds of food (33.3 million meals) in the four counties it serves (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties) in 14 weeks ― a pace that translates to nearly 150 million pounds over a 12-month period. To put that in perspective, for the entire last fiscal year, Feeding South Florida distributed 62 million pounds (51.6 million meals).
Feeding South Florida’s food distributions are updated daily and available at
feedingsouthflorida.org/covid19/. To find out how you can help, learn about what Feeding South Florida is doing, safety precautions, and much more, visit feedingsouthflorida.org/covid19/.