Ceres makes a quick pivot after the closure of their kitchen in the SAY Dream Center
Ceres, a meal distribution and education program that was founded in Sebastopol, will continue providing meals to all its clients by shifting activities to their Sebastopol and Novato kitchens.
The closure of Social Advocates for Youth (SAY) in Santa Rosa this week is having a ripple effect on Ceres, the meal distribution and education program, which built out and ran a large commercial kitchen in the SAY Dream Center.
Ceres founder Cathryn Couch wrote a letter to supporters yesterday describing what transpired: “As you may be aware, this nonprofit [SAY] announced in January that they were in dire financial circumstances. Two weeks ago, a group of major donors came forward with the amount of money SAY leaders said they needed to continue operations. Despite this, SAY’s board announced Monday that they would be shutting down. Our repeated requests for information this week went unanswered, and we heard late yesterday afternoon from Oscar Chavez, CEO for Community Foundation Sonoma County, that doors to the building would be locked this Friday morning pursuant to SAY’s filing of Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”
On Thursday, the day before the closure, Cere’s staff, volunteers, and helpers from Myers Restaurant supply and GMH Builders worked on moving this week’s client meals, food supplies and equipment from The Dream Center to Ceres’ other kitchens in Sebastopol and Novato.
“Despite this sudden change, our clients will continue to receive the medically tailored meal deliveries they depend on,” Couch wrote. “Every scheduled delivery will be going out as usual this week and into the future. I’m grateful to our volunteers, staff, and community partners who are rallying to help us make the immediate move and to continue uninterrupted service to those who depend on us.”
For now, Ceres plans to consolidate all existing clients into their Novato and Sebastopol kitchens. Couch also said that several community partners have already reached out with offers of some kitchen space and time.
“It’s been a wild few days,” said Ceres Community Affairs Director Deborah Ramelli.
“We designed and installed our kitchen when The Dream Center opened in 2016,” Ramelli said. “The program site served more than 100 youth and 620 meal program clients 85,000 meals each year. We’re relying on our emergency response plans and store of frozen meals in order to continue uninterrupted service to the clients who depend on us for meals tailored to meet their medical nutrition needs.”
Although both their Sebastopol site and their former Santa Rosa kitchen were operating at capacity when the closure happened, Ramelli said they had experience consolidating into one site in Sonoma County.
“We've did that during COVID. And we've had to do it at various times to respond to emergency situations like power outages. So this is not new to us, although we usually get a little bit more advance notice,” she said.
They also have a very large store of frozen meals.
“We maintain an inventory of frozen meals for just this kind of situation, where we have an unexpected event,” she said. “Usually it’s in response to a natural disaster, because we’re an emergency meals provider when the county opens disaster shelters, and we just learned during COVID that we have to be ready to respond on a moment’s notice. So we have plenty of inventory to serve our existing clients over the next couple of weeks while we redistribute everything between our Santa Rosa and Novato sites.”
Ramelli said “Our team is sorting out the challenging logistics of incorporating production of nearly 90,000 meals this year into the operations of our Sebastopol and Novato kitchens as a temporary solution until we can move into the new Center for Food, Youth & Community in late 2025.”
That new center, once it is built, will be located in the Roseland area of Santa Rosa near the Kaiser Mercury Way facility.
“The potential instability of leased sites was a primary driver in our decision to build a large new regional home for Ceres,” Couch wrote in her letter to supporters. “That solution is now needed more than ever.”
Ramelli said they are working to find solutions for the 120 high school volunteers that worked in the kitchen and garden at SAY.”
“It’s easier for us to pivot than it is for them,” she said. “We are working with partners to see if we can secure a kitchen location to continue after-school shifts.”
For the most part Ceres’ teenage volunteers were not SAY kids, many of whom have lost the place they thought of as home with SAY’s closure.
“The very worst part about all of this, of course, is those youth that SAY was serving,” Ramelli said. “Those youth have all been through so much trauma already, it's just really, really sad for them.”
Find out more about Ceres and their new Center for Food, Youth & Community here.