1,200 meals a week. None of them for an event.
Most people who book Create know us through an event.
What they do not always know is what happens in our kitchen on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Those are our Kitchen Coalition days.
Kitchen Coalition is a program run through Second Harvest Heartland that partners with local restaurants and caterers to turn donated food bank ingredients into freshly prepared meals for neighbors who face barriers to cooking. Neighbors without consistent access to a kitchen. Neighbors managing illness, housing instability, or a time of transition. People for whom a bag of groceries is not the right solution.
We joined in 2020, when the pandemic shut everything down and we were looking for a way to keep our team together and do something that mattered. We started small, and now five years on, we are at 1,200 meals a week, all delivered to partners in the metro.
I will be honest: Kitchen Coalition helped save this business. When everything stopped, this program kept our chefs working, kept our kitchen running, and kept us connected to the community in a way we had never been before. We had always donated meals to galas and fundraisers. But this put us on the ground level, feeding students at community colleges, families in rural counties, neighbors in transition. That felt different. It still does.
The same team that prepares a private dinner for 30 or a corporate event for 300 shows up for those 1,200 meals every week with the same care. Chefs Desiree and Jake lead the Kitchen Coalition kitchen. The ingredients are donated and change week to week depending on what is available, which keeps the menu design constantly in motion. But donated does not mean ordinary. Every meal is made to be delicious, comforting, and worth looking forward to. The kitchen finds a way every time.
To date, Kitchen Coalition has served more than 7 million meals across Minnesota.
We are proud to be part of that number. The truth is, recent federal funding cuts have reduced our output and the future of the program is uncertain. What happens next depends largely on community support.
If you want to get involved, Kitchen Coalition accepts donations at kitchencoalition.org. Every dollar goes directly to meals for neighbors who need them.
This work is not separate from what we do at Create. It is part of the same commitment. Hospitality means showing up for the community that supports you, in whatever way you can. We cook for the people in our dining room and for the neighbors who need a meal most.
And that has always felt like the right way to run a kitchen.
Philip Dorwart
Founder and Executive Chef
Create Catering and the Dining Studio