ABOUT
Who We Are We are nurses, teachers, bakers, lawyers, stay-at-home-parents, and researchers. We are financial advisors, artists, students, scientists, and musicians. We come from diverse backgrounds, but we have this in common: we care about our community and the environment. And we appreciate good food and hate to see it go to waste.
What We Do We prepare vegetarian meals, packaged as single servings, from fresh ingredients. Almost all of the produce we work with is "recovered" from the waste stream. In other words, food that would otherwise be destined for landfills: nectarines that have bruised because they are perfectly ripe; bunches of greens that have but a few wilted leaves; and cases of tomatoes that might have a soft spot or two but are juicy and full of flavor. Everything we cook is made from scratch, packaged, and distributed to people in our community.
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Why We Do It The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that retailers discard 43 billion pounds of food annually. In California alone, an estimated 11.2 billion pounds of edible food winds up in the waste stream. Much of this food is still wholesome and good to eat. To address the issue of food waste, Senate Bill 1383 was signed into law in 2016. It requires that by 2025, California will recover 20% of edible food that would otherwise be sent to landfills to feed people in need.
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According to Healthy Alameda County, 17.6% of Berkeley residents and 13.5% of Oakland residents live below the poverty level. Half of all residents in this region are rent-burdened. Food prices are higher in the Bay Area than in California as a whole, and many residents who are food insecure are just above the income thresholds for CalFresh nutrition assistance benefits. This situation has been compounded by the recent end of pandemic-response programs. Today, about one in 12 residents of Alameda County are considered food insecure.
Our Story We trace our beginnings to Berkeley Food Network (BFN), a non-profit organization that sources and distributes high-quality food to the food insecure. As a response to the spike in food insecurity brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers at BFN began transforming the sudden surplus of donated foods from shuttered restaurants and food businesses into healthy meals for people in need.
When BFN's prepared food program ceased operations in June of 2023, our group of dedicated volunteers resolved that this very important service to our community would not end. We found a new home for our operation and began cooking again—as Dandelion Kitchen.
We continue to work closely with BFN to source fruits and vegetables, recovered primarily from Berkeley Bowl market, as well as donated food from Alameda County Community Food Bank. BFN also continues to distribute of our meals through their on-site and mobile food pantries.
Since restarting our work, we have been preparing upwards of 750 meals each week, putting us on track to deliver 30,000-40,000 meals over the next year. We estimate that those efforts will wind up diverting close to 10 tons of recovered food from the waste stream.
Why Dandelion? The dandelion is ubiquitous. It tends to pop up just about anywhere—as cheerful dots of yellow in a fertile meadow or as a sign of hope and resilience in a crack in the pavement. Once established, dandelions are hard to eradicate. Often overlooked as a weed, dandelions are entirely edible, and all parts of the plant are used for medicinal purposes. Dandelions are also a symbol of optimism: who hasn't picked up a seed puff, making a wish while blowing the seeds off into the distance? Dandelion Kitchen takes its name from the qualities of this common plant: humility, strength, resilience, tenacity, joy, healing, hope and optimism.