Newark is a city that hasn’t been lucky for a long time. The unrest that dates back to the civil unrest of the last sixties has had a domino effect on the economy and social health of the city, in the form of a declining population, concentrated poverty and degrees of disproportionate source of income among the city’s non-white population. . In the uptick just before it narrows through the 2008 currency crisis, Newark has since undergone a selective expansion that many say is pushing back residents across the city. Lead contamination of your drinking water remains a persistent example of persistent inequalities.
Newark Working Kitchens is an effort to prevent some of these disorders from getting worse with the pandemic. Created in partnership with the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, famous Newark chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson, the program has asked local restaurants to reopen their kitchens and each prepares at least two hundred foods a day to deliver to netpaintings members. After 17 weeks of operation, the program delivered more than 300,000 loose foods and put painters back in 25 restaurants, adding Campbell’s, where six other people are now back in the kitchen.
“I jumped at that opportunity, knowing that it would be the last thing and probably the only thing that would get us going,” he says. “To be honest with you, it saved our business.”
The program aims to both save the local economy and feed those most affected by the pandemic, according to Audible founder Don Katz. “When the crisis struck, it became transparent that … the most fragile cities and others living in the poorest 25% of the economy were going to be hit much harder than other people in the middle or other people at the top,” Says Katz. “The basics of the economy of places to eat and the small food economy are where many other people live from check to check are.”
Seeded with $1.5 million in funding from Audible, the Newark program has since pulled in major donations from other businesses in the city, including $250,000 from TD Bank, $350,000 from energy company PSEG and $200,000 from Thrive Global, as well as $500,000 from the City of Newark. Fundraising is ongoing, as is the impact of the pandemic. So far, there have been nearly 20,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Essex County, where Newark is located.
One such case is that of Walter Green, owner of Uncle Willie’s Wings, a bird’s-wings place in South Newark. “I’m in the hospital. I’m just there. And I said if I went out, I’d definitely make sure I did everything I can to help as many other people as possible,” he says. After about a month of recovery, he opened his store in April and began giving food to the ‘other people’ of the network, and temporarily burned his savings. He then contacted to participate in Newark Working Kitchens. Green joined the program, which allowed him to continue to give without breaking the bank. “It’s consistent with what I’m already doing and I sought to do more,” she says.
Newark’s concept of work kitchens was born from one of the other efforts of Audible’s network, known as Lunch Out Wednesday. Like many corporate offices, Audible gives workers lunch in an on-site coffee shop, a credit that ends up keeping them in construction rather than venturing into local restaurants. In 2017, Audible began subsidizing a $15 weekly voucher for local restaurants to inspire workers to eat out. The program had just celebrated its 30,000th meal when the pandemic occurred.
Katz, who calls herself a Jane Jacobs student, says network participation and donations are at the center of Audible’s culture. This philosophy was directly similar to his resolve to move out of the suburb of Wayne, Newark, New Jersey, where nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. In the 20th century, Katz says, many corporations and firms “believed in a social pact directly similar to the benefits of society.” He cites business leaders and philanthropists such as Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Company, who created a fund in 1917 to build schools for young African-Americans in the impoverished and segregated South. “It was different,” Katz says. “And it didn’t become that disintegrated, independent corporate gift before the 1980s,” a business era he covered as a journalist for magazines like Rolling Stone and Esquire.
Instead of simply donating to a charity like United Way and calling it Corporate Social Responsibility, Katz says the company is thinking of worrying in Newark to “see if a successful business can directly catalyze change.”
As coronavirus spreads and the number of cases increases, Katz has become transparent that the effect on the local economy would be significant. Newark Working Kitchens is a way to prevent bleeding.
He says other giant corporations going through the pandemic can do something similar without problems. “The truth is that many giant American corporations don’t spend their really large food budgets. They also don’t spend their giant global budgets, for apparent reasons. So, if you’re a healthy business and you’re stuck and not just struggling to stay alive,” he says, “you can check your [profit and loss account] and realize that you can probably help your network yourself.
Kats says she hopes to spread the concept to other cities most affected in New Jersey, such as Camden and Trenton, and has also attracted interest from other cities, adding Toronto. But he argues that companies in those regions will have to grow. “The most productive thing is to build models that other people can take elsewhere,” he says.
For now, the program aims to raise the budget to continue offering food to the citizens of Newark and remain workers at the local restaurants that cook them, such as Kai Campbell’s.
“Many other people are out of work, many other people can’t pay their bills. Right now, we’re not profitable, but we’re paying our bills, so I can’t be more grateful,” Campbell says. “Because three months ago, two months ago, we weren’t going to be in business at all. We were done. The stator of death resonated in our ears.
Fast Company Daily Newsletter