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Chef Aziza Young of El Compadre Restaurant and 215 People's Alliance opened The People's Kitchen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four years later, the organization is still going strong, fulfilling its mission of mutual aid and food sovereignty as an estimated 250,000 Philadelphia residents struggle with food insecurity. Run by a collaboration of chefs, students, and volunteers, the kitchen operates out of the Italian Market location and fights hunger with every meal.
April McGregor, chef, preservation expert, board member and volunteer, said the co-op's goal goes beyond fighting hunger, to envision better ways for everyone to share resources.
“The idea of mutual aid is not just about putting us in a position to take care of people, it's about giving everyone the opportunity to contribute and create something better, supporting each other and being a safety net for each other,” she said.
In partnership with The People's Kitchen and food rescue organizations Punks with Lunch and Food Not Bombs, the 9th Avenue kitchen prepares approximately 500 hot meals each week. The meals are distributed directly to the location or to the surrounding community. Chefs and volunteers take great care to prepare meals that are tailored to the cultural and dietary preferences of local residents.
Rebecca Ng, a People's Kitchen volunteer who acts as an interpreter for local Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking residents, said many people were grateful for the variety of food on offer.
“It's really good, and we do a lot of different styles of food,” Ng said, noting that in the 30 years he's lived in South Philadelphia, he's seen the area become more and more diverse, and MacGregor said the volunteers and chefs try to reflect that in the food they serve.
Depending on the day, community members can come directly to the kitchen door at 1149 S. 9th Street at 3 p.m. to pick up a hot meal. There will also be a community fridge stocked with groceries outside.
MacGregor said the core tenet of mutual aid is tied to her family's roots in a small subsistence farming community in rural Mississippi.
“For me, food has always been about community, it's always been about bringing people together, it's always been about taking care of people,” she said, “and that's something I was really taught as a very important cultural value. And I think that's what a lot of us involved with The People's Kitchen are really interested in: resisting this late-capitalist mindset of winner-take-all, 'we don't care if you're dying in the street.'”
MacGregor began volunteering at the kitchen in 2020, and her experience with preserving and fermenting is especially important because the kitchen receives food donations from ShopRite and other businesses, and the chefs often have to get creative to use ingredients they have on hand or preserve them for long periods of time.
Another important aspect of the co-op's food sovereignty work is its Southwest Philadelphia community garden, where volunteers tend a 30-plot plot at 62nd and Reinhardt Streets. Produce is first given to community members, but when there's a surplus of certain fruits and vegetables, especially in the summer, it's sent to the South Philadelphia kitchen, where MacGregor uses her expertise in preservation and fermentation to transform the surplus into long-lasting, delicious ingredients to accompany meals.
