Meal Production for the Food Insecure

Doing the Good Work and Staying Busy

Good food connects us and even during these uncertain times our off premise & venues teams have looked to find an outlet to continue to do what we do best- feed people.

Our commissary kitchen in Arlington, VA, has produced many of the signature dishes you have come to know and love from attending events at Union Station, Mt. Vernon, unique venues throughout the DC Metro area and in your homes and workplaces. On a busy day, our kitchen might produce 3000 or so meals to support our special events throughout the city and suburbs. By mid-March production at our kitchen was at a standstill due to the Covid-19 “stay at home” measures and many of our employees were working remotely or furloughed.

In early April, we were contacted by our sister company, Preferred Meals, a provider of fresh and frozen meals nationally. They needed additional support to expand their local capacity and ramp up production to provide more meals for the food insecure in NYC. Our team rallied quickly and devised an operational plan to jump into production and start cooking! In result, as of this week, we have reinstated over 200 jobs between our kitchen and our sister commissaries (the Bronx, Tarrytown, NJ, Philadelphia and DC) and have pivoted to fresh meal production for those in need. This week we will be producing over 210,000 meals over 7 days! The production capacity of Design Cuisine is at an all time high- producing over 20,000 meals a day!

It feels amazing and productive to be back in our kitchens, albeit while practicing physical distancing and wearing personal protective gear- safety first!