Sonoma Family Meal
Non-profit organization · Petaluma ·
Community kitchen offering culinary training, affordable space, and meals
Community kitchen offering culinary training, affordable space, and meals
"Born out of fire relief after the 2017 Tubbs Fire, Sonoma Family Meal grew from a haphazard effort to feed evacuees into a well-endowed nonprofit that both prepares for disasters and fights ongoing food insecurity in Sonoma County. I learned that Heather Irwin founded the effort by borrowing a restaurant kitchen and rallying chefs, farmers, and donors to produce tens of thousands of meals; the organization gained emergency nonprofit status, served roughly 20,000 meals early on and fed 70 displaced families for two years, and later provided 8,000 meals after the 2019 Kincade Fire. With a $1.3 million county grant and continued restaurant support (including payroll for cooks at 20 establishments), the group built a 3,100-square-foot community kitchen in a former seafood-processing plant, equipped with a tilt skillet, two hood ovens, three freezers, giant work tables and a walk-in freezer holding about 800 servings. Now operating with an approximately $440,000 budget in 2022, a full-time chef (Heather Ames) preparing weekly family meals and a CSA-style four-person box for $60/week, Sonoma Family Meal also rents commissary space, buys produce from farmers, distributes through partner organizations, and aims to add culinary job training for teens and the formerly incarcerated." - Eater
"A disaster-response and community food organization born out of immediate relief efforts after the 2017 Tubbs fire that organized chefs and farmers into a central kitchen to prepare hot, family-style meals for displaced residents. After gaining nonprofit status, the group continued emergency feeding through later wildfires and the COVID-19 crisis—securing a county contract and donations that paid farmers and kept restaurant workers employed while producing hundreds of thousands of meals for migrant farmworkers, low-income families, and the elderly. The organization has since opened a 3,100-square-foot community kitchen that provides a subsidized culinary training program and affordable commissary space to help build local food-system resilience." - ByBon Appétit Staff & Contributors
"I observed that Sonoma Family Meal, originally founded after the wine country fires, pivoted to meet coronavirus needs—raising about $250,000 (including a substantial donation from Jordan Winery) and working with Single Thread and other local restaurants to feed roughly 200 people a day while partnering with FEED Sonoma to assemble 100 CSA vegetable boxes a week to support small local farms." - Becky Duffett
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