A Campus Kitchen is an on-campus student service program that is a member of the nonprofit organization, The Campus Kitchens Project. At a Campus Kitchen, students use on-campus kitchen space and donated food from their cafeterias to prepare and deliver nourishing meals to their communities.
The organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C., on the campus of Gonzaga College High School. There are currently 63 Campus Kitchens, located in Saint Louis, Missouri; Evanston, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Spokane, Washington; Mankato, Minnesota; Washington, D.C.; Lexington, Virginia; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Kearney, Nebraska; Williamsburg, Virginia; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and more (see full list of Campus Kitchens below).
The Campus Kitchens Project was developed in 2001 as a national outgrowth of DC Central Kitchen, a successful local community kitchen model in Washington DC.
In 1989, Robert Egger, founder and CEO of DC Central Kitchen, pioneered the idea of recycling food from around Washington DC and using it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop valuable work skills. DCCK became a national model, and as the idea grew, and groups around the country started to open kitchens, Robert started looking for a way to engage the thousands of underutilized school cafeterias and student volunteers in the effort, particularly in rural communities. In the mid-1990s, he piloted a job training program in 10 schools across the U.S. with the American School Food Service, with funding from the USDA.
In 1999, two Wake Forest University students, Jessica Shortall and Karen Borchert, created a small student organization called Homerun that engaged students in cooking and delivering dinners to folks in the community. What started as a hobby instead became a successful campus organization. After graduating, Borchert came to work at DCCK.
In 2001, the two concepts came together, and with a start-up grant from the Sodexo Foundation, The Campus Kitchens Project piloted its first program at Saint Louis University in Missouri.