NONPROFIT HONORED FOR GIVING AWAY 400K MEALS
O’side Kitchen Collaborative works to save unwanted food
OCEANSIDE
When O’side Kitchen Collaborative launched in June 2019, its chief mission was to use the city’s newly built Green Oceanside Kitchen complex to recover, store and repurpose unwanted produce and other food items that might otherwise end up in landfills.
Nine months later, the pandemic hit. Within a matter of days, the nonprofit foundation reimagined how it could use the city’s large, state-of-the-art commercial kitchen to feed Oceanside’s most vulnerable population during the public health crisis.
Since March, OKC has prepared and helped deliver more than 400,000 meals for vulnerable Oceanside seniors, low-income families and its homeless population. It has also distributed more than 50,000 boxes of fresh produce and other groceries, while diverting more than 375,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill.
OKC’s efforts were recognized this week with the January 10News Leadership Award from ABC 10News and LEAD San Diego, a program of the San Diego Regional Chamber.
OKC Executive Director Vallie Gilley said the award means a tremendous amount to her and her OKC team, which includes 11 other employees, more than 200 volunteers and a network of dozens of local organizations that helped coordinate food collection and meal delivery.
Gilley also credits OKC’s partner, the city of Oceanside, which last spring provided 18 weeks of emergency funding that allowed her to buy biodegradable delivery containers and hire laid-off restaurant workers to help prepare and package as many as 2,000 meals a day for the needy during the early
months of the pandemic.
“The award feels really great, but it’s been a team effort,” Gilley said. “It’s been so scary and it still feels like a really weird time, but we’re doing the best we can and making the most of it.”
The city’s 1,700-squarefoot Green Oceanside Kitchen opened in June 2019 at the El Corazon Senior Center at 3302 Senior Center Drive. In the planning stages for several years, the kitchen was designed to serve as a collection center for unwanted and unused farm, backyard, supermarket and restaurant produce and food items that could be processed into meals for the hungry, food boxes, catering events for charities and preserves and other prepared products that could be sold to support the kitchen’s operation.
Green Oceanside Kitchen was the dream project of Colleen Foster, the city’s longtime environmental officer. Through her efforts, Oceanside was one of the first cities in the U.S. to adopt zero waste as a goal.
Foster said that up to 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. ends up in landfills, in part because there aren’t enough offsite kitchens that can collect, chill and quickly process this food before it spoils. There’s also a lack of community education on food recycling options. Green Oceanside Kitchen has a large-capacity food prep area and a 500square-foot walk-in cooler. It also has a large events center/classroom with a demonstration kitchen where classes have been held to teach local residents cooking and preservation techniques to reduce food waste.
OKC manages the property through a public-private partnership with the city. Until the pandemic struck, it had been hosting community and catered events to cover its program expenses. But Gilley said that as the pandemic approached last February all of the events that had been booked at the center through the spring months were canceled.
A month later, the pandemic forced the city to shut down its senior centers, and local food pantries and hunger-relief charities weren’t unable to ramp up quickly enough to avoid a sudden hunger gap crisis. That led OKC and the city to team up on a disaster relief meal program. When local restaurants were also forced to close in March, OKC was able to purchase some of their surplus food and hire nearly 30 laid-off restaurant and casino workers to help with meal prep.
Over time, OKC expanded its relationship with restaurants, stores, bakeries and commercial food distributors like Sysco and US Foods, which donated excess food products. US Foods also lent OKC some refrigerated trailers. With access to freezer space in the trucks, OKC was able to begin preparing frozen meals for the first time.
The city’s emergency meal-funding grant to OKC ran out last summer. But in the meantime, Gilley said public and anonymous donations and a grant from the San Diego Foundation have allowed OKC to continue preparing about 3,000 packaged meals each week for seniors and struggling families.
Gilley said OKC’s transition into meal service this past year has clearly filled an untapped need, so she said some part of this emergency program will remain part of its mission after the pandemic ends.
“We’re not changing this,” she said. “This has been such great soul work for everyone involved. We will always have some sort of disaster relief efforts. We’ve always contributed and given back, but we’re taking on something bigger. We want to help build a strong community.”