Mercy Chefs
Opens Community Kitchen in Richmond
Mercy Chefs is focused on serving hungry people right in their own backyard. To do this, the organization has opened community kitchens in three states, including the most recent one in the heart of Richmond. A new community kitchen opened in Richmond on Nine Mile Road. Sponsored by Mercy Chefs, the Portsmouth, Virginia-based organization founded in 2006, the Richmond community kitchen provides nutritionally rich meals to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity, especially in Richmond’s East End and Petersburg. The community kitchen creates healthy meals and also offers cooking classes, nutrition information, and job skills training.
“In nearly 20 years, Mercy Chefs has served 25 million people in natural disasters around the world,” says founder Gary LeBlanc. “We take great pride in that, but the community kitchens are one of my favorite initiatives. The challenge came from my wife Ann. She said the call is not to ‘just go feed people during disasters, but to just go feed people.’ Right in our own backyard, there are hungry children. We are using our organization’s resources, volunteers, and skills to feed food-insecure populations across the nation. That’s how the community kitchen model was born.”
The Portsmouth Community Kitchen opened in 2019, with two more following in Nashville and Dallas, and now the latest Community Kitchen in Richmond opened last year.
“We partner with other organizations that are providing after-school care, women’s shelters, elder outreach, summer sports programs — anything in the community that doesn’t have a food service component, that’s when Mercy Chefs comes along with the food,” Gary says. “If we can help those organizations that are already doing great work, then we impact the community in a very tangible way."
Mercy Chefs has responded to over 200 natural disasters in 29 states and territories and 20 nations with the help of over 15,000 volunteers. For more information and to see how you can help, visit MercyChefs.com.
The power of a nutritious meal is overwhelming in the results that it can bring. We know that we're not going to change the world, but if we can change the trajectory of how children eat and how they view food, then in a few years, we think that small change is going to make a big difference.
- Gary LeBlanc, Founder, Mercy Chefs