Taste of success
Nonprofit has served 2 million meals in B’klyn
THIS caterer ain’t chopped liver.
The nonprofit Comfort Food Catering is staffed by hundreds of people seeking to transform their fortune: people who used to be homeless or jailed or addicted to drugs, for example, who serve up good, healthy meals — and lots of ’em — at dozens of sites across the city.
One of those looking for a new beginning is Brunilda Rivera, a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident who helped prepare a baked chicken dinner on Monday at a Crown Heights transitional residence.
“They like fried chicken,” Rivera, 48, said of her diners, as she chopped peppers and onions and grated one carrot after another.
“But they can’t have no fried chicken up in here — they can have baked chicken.”
The dinner at Concern for Independent Living’s apartments in Crown Heights included the 2 millionth meal served by Comfort Food, a division of Manhattan-based poverty-fighting nonprofit Project Renewal, in the last 12 months.
For those keeping score at home, that’s nearly 5,500 meals per day, dished out at 28 locations across the city.
The clients include senior homes, shelters and corporate customers.
“It’s more than we’ve ever done,” said Barbara Hughes, the group’s director of food services.
The addition of four new clients since December has bumped up the numbers: Comfort Food served nearly 175,000 more meals in the last 12 months than it did the previous fiscal year.
Project Renewal has added a second food service program, primarily for veterans.
“It creates great jobs for graduates of our culinary arts program,” Project Renewal President Mitchell Netburn said.
Concern for Independent Living provides a transitional home for people moving out of shelters and psychiatric hospitals.
The organization contracted Comfort Foods to provide healthy breakfasts and dinners to its 65 residents on Rochester Ave.
Rivera, the onsite chef and a 2012 graduate of Project Renewal, served a fish fillet with tomato sauce and a side of rice and beans for Monday’s dinner.
One of the diners at Concern graduated from the culinary arts program with Rivera.
Gary Smith, 36, shuffled from shelter to shelter for a decade after his parents died, and then two years ago he finally landed a slot at Concern.
It was there that he first heard of Project Renewal.
“It’s a nice course,” he said. “It helps me stay out of trouble.” Smith is hoping he can move into commercial cooking again soon, maybe even in Rivera’s kitchen.
“I’m hoping,” he said, “I can help out this lady right here.”