DC Central Kitchen

What DC Central Kitchen does

DC Central Kitchen is a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that uses food to fight hunger and poverty together. Robert Egger, a former nightclub manager, founded it in 1989. It works with local farmers and food-recovery partners, cooks meals from scratch, and delivers them to shelters, nonprofits, youth programs, seniors and D.C. public schools. In 2025 it served about 6.2 million meals, including roughly 12,000 school meals a day across 30 schools.

The kitchen doubles as a classroom. Its Culinary Job Training program prepares adults facing serious barriers to employment for jobs in food service. About 161 people graduate each year, more than 2,200 have been trained in total, and employers such as Marriott, Hilton and José Andrés Group hire graduates. DCCK also runs social enterprises, including school-meal contracts, cafés and Healthy Corners, which stocks fresh produce in neighborhood corner stores. Those businesses bring in revenue and create jobs. Since 2023 it has operated from the Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs and Justice in Southwest D.C.

Charity Navigator rates DCCK four out of four stars. In its 2025 report, fundraising was 4% of expenses and management and general costs were 11%.

Key facts

• 6.2 million meals served in 2025 (DCCK 2025 Impact Report)
• About 12,000 scratch-cooked school meals a day at 30 D.C. schools (DCCK 2025 Impact Report)
• Up to 5,000 community meals a day for shelters, nonprofits and youth programs, or 1.5 million a year (DCCK Community Meals page)
• 161 Culinary Job Training graduates a year, and more than 2,200 adults trained since the program began (DCCK)

Before you give

• Accepts gifts from donor-advised funds (direct links for Fidelity, Schwab and BNY Mellon), stock, IRA and planned gifts, and monthly giving.
• Workplace giving: Combined Federal Campaign #67538; United Way #8233. Matching gifts are supported.
• DCCK's own site says its Charity Navigator score is 100%; the score percentage was not visible on the CN page as fetched.