A week before Thanksgiving, Maria Elena Bruno stood outside the door of NourishKC in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast neighborhood. Behind her, a line of people queued up looking for what might be their only hot meal of the day.
Bruno has been coming to the community kitchen off 8th and The Paseo for about two years. “The biggest thing you can struggle with being homeless is eating,” she said.
Bruno describes her living arrangements currently as couch surfing. Nearly as important as the hot meal at NourishKC, Bruno said, is the sense of community.
“It kind of makes you feel included and that you’re thought of for a little bit, and it’s like at least I got somewhere to go to eat.”
For 35 years, NourishKC has fed Kansas City’s unhoused population, people down on their luck or anyone who has needed a hot meal.
Guests looking for lunch patiently line up beneath the protection of a steel awning outside the dining room entry that delcares “Welcome to Our Kitchen."
Behind the door, a hive of volunteers and staff are preparing hundreds of meals to be consumed on site or carried out the door. They serve meals five days a week from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
NourishKC recently partnered with another nonprofit, The Prospect KC, which provides culinary education and workforce programs. It has been operating in the historic 18th and Vine District since 2019.
The Prospect KC’s executive director and chef Shanita McAfee-Bryant said that part of the mission of the combined nonprofits is to provide a low-barrier food source while training people in culinary arts.
“We're using food as a tool to connect people to services and workforce development training,” she said.
The combined nonprofit is modeled after a movement in Seattle called Catalyst Kitchens that trains people who struggle with barriers for employment.
McAfee-Bryant added that some members of her staff have experienced challenges in life that many of their guest have also gone through, and that helps them better serve their clientele.
During the winter months, McAfee-Bryant says they will provide shelter on days when it’s too cold to be outside. Unlike some of Kansas City's homeless shelters, there won’t be a specific temperature that triggers them to open the doors.
“For us, when I'm uncomfortably cold outside, then we should probably open up so people can be inside," she says.
Just days before Thanksgiving, another wave of volunteers donned hairnets, scooped food, peeled apples and delivered restaurant-style hot plates of food to hungry guests in the basement of Beehive KC, where NourishKC operates. (There is no connection between the two agencies.)
While McAfee-Bryant roams the kitchen, supervising and digging into the cooking process herself, a swarm of staff and volunteers zig and zag around stainless steel counters, a massive stove, ovens and all the accouterments of a working kitchen.
Kansas City resident Alison Troutwine, with her husband and two daughters, were volunteering for the first time in the kitchen. She and her husband Adam cleaned collard greens while across the workstation, their daughters, ages 13 and 11, peeled apples for a dessert.
Troutwine said it’s important for her kids to learn about helping others. “This week of Thanksgiving, we're trying to instill gratitude, and this is a way to do that," she says.
Inside the dining room, guests started to file in as soon as the doors opened at 11 a.m. More student volunteers gathered to deliver plates of chili with fruit, salad and cornbread.
Staff and volunteers inside the kitchen continued preparing chickens, vegetables and desserts to be doled out for a food distribution effort to be delivered before Thanksgiving. One of NourishKC’s goals is to provide nutritious meals that are not laden with sugar or poor nutrients.
Jay Erickson was one of the first in the door and didn’t waste a second before digging into a plate of chili. He has been coming to NourishKC on and off since 2012.
Erickson said he appreciates the community and the cold water along with the variety of food. His apartment doesn’t have electricity, and he comes to NourishKC “just to get away from the riff raff, to get out of the elements."
"They'll never take the place of my family, but they're what I'm going to use as my family right now."
