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Kitchen uses the leftovers to help feed the hungry
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Published: July 29, 2009
The Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest University recently got some extra help with feeding the hungry.
Quaker Oats, in partnership with Share Our Strength, gave a $500 Quaker Go Grant to Wake's Campus Kitchen to help it maintain service to area agencies during the summer, when donations from campus dining services decrease.
The Campus Kitchen at Wake started three years ago, but has already grown to serve 1,200 meals a month through seven different Winston-Salem agencies. These include the Children's Home, Prodigals Community, residential communities of AIDS Care Service and homeless and other groups served by First Assembly of Food.
The Campus Kitchen is part of the national nonprofit Campus Kitchens Project founded by Wake alumnae Karen Borchert and Jessica Shortall. It has set up programs in about 20 colleges and universities across the country. They use surplus food from school dining halls to feed the hungry.
Borchert had started a program called Homerun while a student that was similar to Meals-on-Wheels. Wake switched to Campus Kitchen in 2006 to change to a recycling program that keeps food from going to waste.
Students, families volunteer
Shelley Graves is the full-time paid coordinator. Other staffing comes from volunteers. Those are mostly students, but also Wake faculty, staff members and others.
"We even have whole families who get involved, as well as high-school students and people from area churches," said Brighid Jensen, the director of campus life, who oversees Wake's service programs.
Since 2006, the program has rescued 20,000 pounds of food and served 25,000 meals. "Some months, we are verging on capacity for the number of meals we can serve," Jensen said.
Graves said she has already spent most of the grant money to buy such pantry staples as tomato sauce, rice, noodles and beans. "We like to buy beans, because they are really high in protein. You can do a lot of things with them, and people tend to like them," she said.
Leftovers are often thrown out
Most of the donations come from the school's main dining hall, run by ARAMARK.
Graves said that most food-service companies plan ahead and do not use leftovers. "They have a certain number of students (prepaid) on meal plans, so they have to have a certain number of meals prepared every day."
Of course, all of the food is rarely eaten. "At most universities, the leftover food is thrown out," Graves said.
The Campus Kitchen steps in to reduce that waste. "They might have 10 pans of taco meat prepared," Graves said. "If for some reason tacos aren't popular that night, or not many people show up, they put the meat in the fridge for us."
The Campus Kitchen uses only food that was never served or put on a cafeteria line. It has access to a kitchen to package the food, or to turn it into a different meal, or to cook meals from scratch if necessary.
The program tries to provide a full meal of a protein, starch and vegetable. It gets other donations, such as bread from Harris Teeter and canned goods from Crisis Control Ministry, to round out the leftovers from ARAMARK.
Graves graduated from Wake undergrad in 2006. She completed her master's degree in communications, with a focus on nonprofits, this spring at Wake. She started working at the Campus Kitchen this month. She has had to close the kitchen until Aug. 10, while she gets her ServSafe certification in food safety.
"One thing I like about Wake is that overall the students volunteer a lot," she said. "I think that's why Campus Kitchen has grown so much."
She also said that Campus Kitchen allows students to take leadership roles and have a lot of input into how the program is run, and to connect with the people they're serving.
"When they take the food, we encourage them to sit and eat with the people we're serving and to talk to them -- ask them if they like the food," Graves said.
"We try to make sure that what we're sending out are things that people actually want to eat."
■ Michael Hastings, the Journal's Food editor, can be contacted by phone at 727-7394, e-mail at mhastings@wsjournal.com, or mail at c/o Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. His most recent columns can be read on our Web site at www.journalnow.com.
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