From our 2/20/2026 newsletter

Dear Friends,

We can’t believe our luck. Since February 1, our big weekly Sunday cook-a-thon and our Monday-Friday Cafewal food-service training program are finally sharing ONE KITCHEN and, dang, it’s a beaut! Our friends at the Lower East Side Girls Club have a glorious facility.

Prepare yourself because I’m going to boast like a Real Housewife™ about the amenities in this modern industrial kitchen:

• a relatively roomy stovetop area with a griddle;
• a commercial pizza oven (!);
• a windowed dishwashing area overlooking a courtyard;
• a separate room with a big stainless-steel worktable and six-rack convection oven (just perfect for prepping and cooking thousands of servings of chicken);
• a windowed dining area, which we currently use to package meals;
• a spacious downstairs prep room with lots of storage as well as..
• a walk-in fridge and freezer; and
• a dumbwaiter to move heavy items between the floors. (I really love the dumbwaiter.)

This combined space affords us boatloads of opportunities. With added storage, we don’t need to shuttle food and equipment between separate locations so we can boost our meal output. Our rather ambitious 2026 goal is to supply 250,000 meals to New Yorkers. That means we can take on new distribution partners and get food out to more underserved neighborhoods.

We also finally have the space and budget for a five-day-a week instructor for the Cafewal food service trainees. Our first cohort in the new kitchen is being taught by Albert Nguyen, not just a veteran of Michelin-starred restaurants but also a dedicated great guy who is adding his special sauce to the trainee program.

Another boon: We’re now able to partner with more high-need sites in our own neighborhood. During the week, we supply free daily lunch to residents of Meltzer Towers, a building that houses low-income seniors and to a local residence for recovering addicts. And twice a week a group of resident-volunteers from the Jacob Riis Houses, a Section 8 complex right across Avenue D, arrive with carts to take our meals to homebound neighbors.

Because the LES Girls Club shares our mission of uplifting and empowering the community, we are discussing how to collaborate on a pretty exciting variety of projects.

This is exactly the win/win situation we need to continue and expand our work. Your ongoing support is what makes this big move possible. THANK YOU. Together we can continue the fight against food-insecurity in our city,