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(From left) Food Pantry Administrator Jacob Cheeks and Pastor Michael Sanders of Richmond's Mount Olive Baptist Church pick up containers of soup for the church's food pantry.
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Furloughed Jefferson Hotel chef Seth Goulston works with Hatch Helps.
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Eric Harvey, a Reynolds Community College culinary student and intern at Hatch Kitchen, assists with preparing meals for Hatch Helps.
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Head chef of the forthcoming Hatch Kitchen Cafe Wyatt Lane prepares meals for Hatch Helps.
“We’re being creative and putting our giant kitchens to use,” says Austin Green, who, along with Brad Cummings of Startup Virginia and Lynx Ventures, founded Richmond's Hatch Kitchen.
For the past month, the food and beverage incubator, one of the largest operations of its kind in Central Virginia, has been donating hearty vegetarian soups to the Mount Olive Baptist Church food pantry through an initiative they've dubbed Hatch Helps. Thus far they've distributed approximately 2,500 meals, Green says.
Weeks away from opening the namesake Hatch Cafe, an eatery and event space already booked for months and set to be helmed by chef Wyatt Swaney, the coronavirus pandemic struck. Green found himself with an eager head chef, an empty space, an abundance of freezers and a desire to give back. Hatch Helps was born.
“We decided we could wait and make this absolutely perfect and have every detail worked out, or we could start making food and giving it to people that need it,” Green says.
Now Swaney, a former chef at Aloi, along with Jefferson Hotel banquet sous chef Seth Goulston; Mike Crowley, also of The Jefferson Hotel; an intern from the Reynolds Community College culinary program; and a handful of volunteers are going back to the basics: cooking to feed as many people as possible.
“There are so many people in need, and this is affecting everyone,” says Goulston.
When Green shared initial plans for distributing the food, Goulston connected him with Pastor Michael Sanders of Mount Olive. The congregation, just a few miles away at Bells Road and Jefferson Davis Highway, was exactly what Green had in mind.
“We wanted to figure out a way to help the community directly around us, where Hatch is located,” he says. “We’ve wanted to do it for a long time, the need has just sort of skyrocketed during this time. It’s basically a food desert around here, and there’s not a lot of access to healthy food.”
Each Tuesday, Pastor Sanders, Food Pantry Administrator Jacob Cheeks or volunteers from Mount Olive pick up hundreds of quart containers of soup to bring to the church. Each quart equates to two meals. This week featured a spring vegetable soup with onion, garlic, cannellini beans, squash, zucchini, tomato, kale, celery, carrot and spices, while past batches have included a curry lentil and three-bean vegetarian chili.
Serving 400 people each week, the food pantry is open from noon to 1 p.m., and then again from 4 to 6 p.m. each Wednesday. Now, along with bread, juice, meat and other necessities, people can leave with a prepared meal made from scratch.
The response has been absolutely overwhelming, Green says, adding that he’s been happy to see neighbors from the Clopton and surrounding communities leaving with soup from Hatch Kitchen.
“I went to see the operation and gauge people’s interests, and I saw lots of people ... on bikes or walking up, and it’s predominantly people from that neighborhood,” he says.
For Goulston, this may not be the typical Champagne brunch for 400 he’s used to preparing at The Jefferson, but working with Hatch Helps allows him to remain in the place he knows best — the kitchen — and stay connected with and provide help to the community.
“The undertone for this whole thing is grateful, just of everyone, is grateful,” he says. “It’s truly been rewarding.”
Hatch Kitchen is home to over 60 clients, creative food-centric self-starters ranging from owners of pop-ups such as Gold Cart to meal-prep service HumanFood RVA and a corral of food trucks and specialty food businesses. At any given moment gourmet ice cream sandwiches, pork barbecue or kimchi could be in progress in the kitchen. Green predicts that those clients may soon be involved in Hatch Helps.
“If this expands to the scale I think it has the potential to, I have a feeling we will have a lot of our members definitely pitching in,” Green says, noting that Warren Haskell of the Wandering Biscuit pop-up made hundreds of biscuits to accompany the soup donations.
Hatch Helps also recently partnered with Feed More to make use of some of the nonprofit's overflow food donations. In addition, Green says Hatch is currently working on opening up more distribution points in other areas in need.
“This is just the beginning, and I see this growing and continuing in the future,” he says. “We’re just getting started, there’s potential to grow, a lot. We don’t plan on stopping when things go back to normal.”
To purchase meals for the community, visit Hatch Helps.
