Sonoma Family Meal opens a pickup location in Sebastopol
Sonoma Family Meal opens a pickup location in Sebastopol
Buy a meal subscription for your family and feed the hungry at the same time with Sonoma Family Meal
Sonoma Family Meal was founded by Press Democrat food writer and Dining Editor Heather Irwin during the Tubbs Fire in 2017 to provide meals to fire victims. They made food in borrowed commercial kitchens and hosted large public dinners throughout the disaster, and continued providing meals to fire victims after the disaster was over.
During COVID, they shifted their mission to pay restaurants to provide meals to non-profits that would then distribute them to those who needed them. (This had the intended side benefit of providing funds to restaurants to keep their employees working during the pandemic.)
In June of 2022, the organization opened a large commercial kitchen in Petaluma and started producing their own meals again.
To support their efforts, they rely on fundraising but also on what their director Whitney Reuling calls “a social enterprise” – selling meal subscriptions to the public that underwrite their meal distribution to the needy.
The motto for their meal subscription program is “Eat well by doing good.”
Last week, Sonoma Family Meal announced a new pickup location for these weekly meal subscriptions—at the Punchdown in the Barlow.
What do you get with a meal subscription?
Reuling compares the meal subscription to a CSA, except instead of a basket of vegetables, you get fully prepared meals. They come in two-meal and four-meal packages
Subscription meals are prepped at their Petaluma kitchen and dropped off at three locations around the county—now including Sebastopol.
Here’s an example of what’s on offer for their weekly meal subscription in January: Simmered Pork Chile Verde with Spanish Rice and Black Beans (1/9); Herb Roasted Chicken with Moroccan Chermoula Sauce and Fennel Farotto (1/16); Chicken Tikka Masala with Steamed Basmati Rice and Roasted Winter Vegetables(1/23); Stemple Creek Beef Pastisio with Penne Pasta and Greek Bechamel Sauce (1/30)
Gluten-free and vegetarian options available. If you subscribe for three months, you get a 10% discount.
“It is for households with disposable income,” Reuling said. “That being said, the pricing is super competitive at $16 a meal. And they're very family-friendly meals. All proceeds from the meals subscription help to support our programmatic operation costs.”
“There are probably a couple of 100 culinary job training nonprofit programs in the country. There's a network of them—and we're part of it—called Catalyst Kitchens, and virtually all of them operate some type of social enterprise to provide employment opportunities and generate revenue.”
See the meal subscription page here.
What your meal subscription supports
Sonoma Family Meal still provides meals for those in need. They have food distribution programs in Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Guerneville.
They also provide job training for people looking to enter the food service industry. They offer a free, bilingual, 9-week culinary training course and provide graduates of the course with help finding a job.
“We launched our first cohort of that this past year,” Reuling said. “We're doing two more cohorts this year, and that's probably about 16 students per 9-week cycle. In our first cohort, we placed people at Single Thread and Spinster Sisters; we have another with Sonoma Valley Unified School District.”
Reuling said they also hired some of their graduates to work in their own meal prep program, and hope to hire more as their subscription program expands.
“We provide training and some soft skills and partnership with JobLink, interview, interview skills resume building. We work with various financial institutions to provide financial literacy. This year, we're going to be bringing in some other partners: Jobs for Justice to talk about workplace rights and On the Margins talking about mental health,” Reuling said.
A history of helping
Reuling, who grew up in west county, has worked with Sonoma Family Meal for almost two years.
“I'm a West County almost-native,” she said. “I went to Forestville School. I went to El Molino, and then I spent about 18 years on the East Coast. I went to NYU for Food Studies and then started a career around food education and food access in New York's most underserved neighborhoods, so the South Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem and so forth. And then I spent about 13 years doing that type of work in San Francisco, and in 2021, my husband and I moved back—my parents are still in Forestville. I was initially going to launch an organization here to provide free culinary job training, then I connected with Heather Irwin at just the right time and took on the role with Sonoma Family Meal.”
In addition to subscribing to their meal program, Reuling said there are other ways to help the organization. “We're always looking for volunteers at our kitchen,” she said.
And if you know someone who could benefit from free culinary job training, the next 9-week session starts on Feb. 12. Find out more at sonomafamilymeal.org.