Photos and reporting by Stacey Joy
Organizers say the move will allow EVLovesNYC to expand production numbers and reach across New York City while still maintaining collaboration with its usual delivery partners in the East Village, Tompkins Square Park and across the city.
The volunteer-run group traces its humble beginnings to the spring of 2020, when a few friends got together to prepare meals for their neighbors in the kitchen of their tiny East Village apartment.
More than four years and 500,000 meals later, EVLovesNYC continues to prepare and distribute beef, chicken and vegan meals that are sensitive to allergens and religious practices.
So you've been looking for this for a while now. How did this come about? What was the agreement for using the Rethink space?
We got in touch with Matt Jozwiak. [founder and CEO] They are supported by Rethink Food through East Village Neighbors Who Care. This mutual aid group receives hot meals from both EVLovesNYC and Rethink Food to support the number of clinics and services they provide to asylum seekers.
After a quick call with the Rethink team, we discussed EVLovesNYC using Rethink Food’s new community kitchen on the weekends: Their staff typically operates out of the space Monday through Friday, and on Sundays we have free access to their kitchen and facilities.
Now that you've been living in your new space for a few weeks, what's it like cooking in your new kitchen?
As with any new kitchen, we're still getting used to the new layout, but overall we're excited about the increased number of cooking surfaces, which will greatly increase the speed at which we can create meals.
The Sixth Street Community Center was limited to six stoves and five rack convection ovens and could only serve around 2,500 meals a day. Now, they have 24 stoves, a griddle, two deep fryers, four gas ovens and a tilt skillet at their disposal, as well as a loading dock for delivery partners to pick up meals, an additional 800 square feet of prep and meal assembly space and a refrigerated compost room.
Will you continue to use the space at Sixth Street Community Center?
Yes. Our lease was coming up for renewal and we couldn't afford the increased costs of our space. To continue our partnership, we signed a three-month agreement, starting July 1. The agreement refrained from any significant price increases but limited production to 1,300 meals per week at the Sixth Street Community Center and required us to rent out our kitchen to other organizations.
This will force them to scale back their Sunday hours, but they plan to use the space for smaller events throughout the week.
Are you still planning on doing a distribution in the East Village? If so, what are the dates, times and locations?
Hot meals will be delivered from the new kitchen every Sunday from 1:30pm to 2:30pm so as not to disrupt food distribution in front of Sixth Street Community Center and Tompkins Square Park.
We will also continue to support Neighbors Who Care in the East Village with our weekday services, including our Free Store at Hope Church every Monday from 1pm-3pm and our worship service at St. Mark Church on the Bowery every Wednesday from 4:30pm-6:30pm.
They will also be working with Rethink Food to do additional distributions in Tompkins Square Park on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons.
Your new commercial kitchen is huge. Will this increase the amount of food you can produce? Will you be able to cook more dishes?
Yes! We are proceeding cautiously as we become familiar with the logistics of our new space and get a better idea of how much we can financially accommodate, but the real estate situation has been a major constraint on our ability to produce meals every Sunday.
Realistically, we plan to start scaling up quantities to support additional distributions across the city from October. Once we can figure out how to make this financially feasible, we can gradually increase production to 4,000-5,000 individually packaged hot meals every Sunday.
How can the community support EVLovesNYC going forward?
[Co-founder Mammad Mahmoodi]
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